


LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

1 ^ 5*55 

Chap.-Copyright No._ 

Shelf_AA/_ jL 

UN1TED STATES OF AMERICA. 










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ELDER AARON WALKER 











PHYSIOLOGY AND PSYCHOLOGY: 


OR, 


THE VITAL AND PHYSICAL 
FORCE PHILOSOPHIES OF CREATION 
AND THOUGHT 


DISCUSSED, COMPARED AND CONTRASTED 


. 

Elder Aaron Walker 
M 




INDIANAPOLIS 

THE HOLLENBECK PRESS 
1900 

V- 



Library of Conpresaj 

Two Copies Received 

JAN 24 1901 

f-s Copyright entry 

*4, /<j O o 

SECOND COPY 


B^S55 


COPYRIGHT 1900 
BY 


AARON WALKER 








5L&I l<pl 


AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND PREFACE. 



The author of this little book is a son of Elder 
John Walker, whose remains are in the Odd Fel¬ 
lows cemetery at Plainfield, Hendricks county, 
Indiana. The author’s birthday was the seven¬ 
teenth day of October, 1826. His native state 
was North Carolina. He was brought to Indiana 
in very early life, and educated in the schools of 
the early history of Indiana ; taught school under 
the school laws of those times. Was ordained to 
the ministry on the fifth Lord’s-day in May, 1853, 
after a public life of one year, in the congrega¬ 
tion of Center church, Rush county, Indiana, 
and by its elders. The following is a true copy 
of his certificate of ordination : 

“This is to certify, to all whom it may concern, that Aaron 
Walker, a member of the church at Center, in Rush county, 
was ordained to the ministry of the gospel of Christ by fast¬ 
ing, laying on of the hands, and prayer, on the fifth Lord’s-day 
in May, 1853, and is hereby authorized to preach the word, 
administer the ordinances of the Lord’s house, and solemnize 
matrimony. 

“Given under our hands June first, 1853. 

“Isaac'S. Lowe, 

“Gabriel F. Sutton, 

“Ila Reeves, 


(iii) 


“ Elders .” 


IV 


AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND PREFACE. 


The extent of his traveling in the ministry has 
been very great. He has administered the sacra¬ 
ment of baptism in 157 different localities. Has 
been in public discussions 180 days—four,,five 
and six hours per day. Has discussed the merits 
of the materialistic philosophy from every con¬ 
ceivable standpoint with men who professed to 
be Christians, and with unbelievers, and now 
presents this volume of lectures, first delivered 
in a medical college to counteract the natural 
tendency of the study of the physical sciences to 
plunge medical students into the atheistic phi¬ 
losophy of materialism, and also at the request 
of the medical men who heard them delivered. 
And if this volume shall redound to the advance¬ 
ment of the human mind in the knowledge of 
scientific and philosophical truths, the author 
will feel that his labor has not been in vain. 

Aaron Walker. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE. 

Creation With or Without Intelligence, Which?. 1 

Design in Nature. 13 

A Living Intelligence or Dead Atoms, Which?. 26 

The Origin of a Christian Idea. 42 

Freedom, the Basis of Equal Rights and Religious Belief.. 51 

Artificial or Natural Justice, Which?. 65 

All Men Live by Faith. 72 

Natural Morality, Civilization and Religious Belief. 83 

Genesis and Geology. 94 

Sources of Our Knowledge.100 

Conception and Judgment.Ill 

Hypotheses or Facts, Which?.124 

Intuition and Inner Mind.137 

Mind or Soul, Its Faculties and Value.152 

Mind, Soul, Spirit, Intellect and Emotions.164 

Monotheism and Civilization.172 

Inspiration.188 



























CREATION WITH OR WITHOUT INTELLI¬ 
GENCE, WHICH? 


Unbelievers in creation by intelligence have 
worked, in the fields of astronomy, and geology, 
and psychology, to establish the physical force 
theory of creation, and thought—a creation with¬ 
out God, claiming that the planets, and satellites, 
and stars, and comets, originated from fragments' 
thrown off from the sun’s fiery mass, which was 
always a mere hypothesis, an imagination en¬ 
tirely destitute of proof, for it is certain that no 
man could tell the nature of a mass of matter 
thousands or millions of miles distant, nor tell 
whether it was cold and growing colder, or hot 
and growing hotter. It was never claimed that 
any man ever saw the fragments in their cooling 
process scaling off into rings, and breaking up 
into planets, no astronomer ever witnessed any¬ 
thing of this kind; it was one of the air-castles 
of hypothetical reasoners, a mere speculation, 
always unsatisfactory even with those who en¬ 
dorsed it. It made them no wiser touching the 
origin of worlds. 

They were always troubled with these ques¬ 
tions : Where did the gaseous matter of the sun 

1 


2 


CREATION WITH INTELLIGENCE. 


come from? How did it get so hot when the 
space around it was cold enough to overcome the 
heat at the surface? And when did the surface 
begin to cool? Did it contain in itself the princi¬ 
ples of chemical affinity, animal and vegetable 
life, and intellect? If so how did they get there? 
If not so, where did they come from? The theory 
never did, nor ever will, answer these questions. 
If the fiery mass had power to move itself it was 
equal to a favorite illustration among atheists, 
viz:, a rotating grindstone, throwing off, or 
scattering water, but the theory requires the 
grindstone to turn itself; it supposes the power 
to put the fire-cloud in motion was raised by its 
cooling faster at one place than at another, but 
why should such a thing occur? No reason has 
ever been assigned. And if it was eternally hot 
why should it not remain eternally hot? 

According to this hypothesis the outer cooling 
ring, cooling faster, contracting and becoming 
more dense, should have fallen into the center of 
the mass, otherwise there was no law of gravita¬ 
tion connected with the thing. But this is not 
all of the objections. The theory allows that the 
fire mist kept cooling and shrinking up while the 
rings of the very same heat and material kept 
cooling faster, contracting and widening out at 
the same time ; a piece of behavior unknown 
among fluids and solids throughout the world ; a 
thing contrary to all human observation and rea- 


CREATION WITH INTELLIGENCE. 


3 


son. The only rings which astronomers have ex¬ 
amined have been closing in on their planet, Sat¬ 
urn, and it is believed by astronomers, and was 
predicted by Sir David Brewster, that they will 
finally unite with the body of the planet. 

It is an essential condition of the hypothesis, 
that the cooling, contracting rings were of a dif¬ 
ferent density from the rest of the mass. Their 
flying off from the more fluid portion, called their 
divergence, was supposed to arise from their grow¬ 
ing heavier as they cooled, and therefore more 
powerfully disposed to fly off, and rotating so 
much faster than the heated internal mass, from 
which they derived their motion, they finally flew 
out from it. This performance reminds us of the 
Yankee’s mill-wheel, which traveled three times 
faster than the stream that moved it, while the 
current of water was so swift that it caused saw- 
logs to fly up out of the water. 

Astronomical facts and mechanical principles 
always conflicted with this theory of creation ; 
according to it the planets furthest from the sun 
should be the most dense, or compact, but the 
very opposite is conceded to be true. The planet 
that is nearest the sun is six or eight times more 
dense than some that are further off, viz. : Jupi¬ 
ter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. 

“The orbits of the comets, being inclined at 
all angles of the sun’s equator, are often out of 
the plane of his rotation, and therefore in the 


4 


CREATION WITH INTELLIGENCE. 


way of the theory.” “Then the moons of Ura¬ 
nus, revolving in a contrary direction to all the 
other planets, fly right into the face of the the¬ 
ory.” The sun, being the only luminous body 
in our system of planets, all being, according to 
the theory, made of the same material, and by 
the same process, is, in itself, a self-evident refuta¬ 
tion of this theory, and of any other theory of 
creation by blind mechanical forces. 

The same power, whether natural or super¬ 
natural, that set the sun in the center of primary 
planets, placed Saturn in the center of the orb of 
his moons, or secondary planets, and Jupiter in 
the center of his four, and our earth in the cen¬ 
ter of the moon’s orbit. If the creative cause had 
been a blind one, without design or contrivance, 
the sun might have been a body like all the other 
planets, a body without light and heat. Why 
was it that there was but one body in our sys¬ 
tem qualified to give light and heat to all the 
rest? The immortal Newton says, “I know no 
reason for this, but that the author thought it 
convenient .”—Optics J, p. 1^38. 

The nebular hypothesis was, at one time, quite 
popular among the enemies of the Christian re¬ 
ligion, was regarded by them as their stronghold ; 
conceived by them to be a demonstration of crea¬ 
tion without God, a simplification and explana¬ 
tion of creation by mere physical and mechanical 
forces. But large telescopes have annihilated 


CREATION WITH INTELLIGENCE. 


5 


the theory, and demonstrated the proposition 
that worlds exist by their own nature, and of 
necessity, wherever there is room for them, to be 
both false and absurd. Still the ignorant talk 
about the nebular theory, about star-dust, and 
fire-cloud world making? 

Large telescopes have demonstrated the fact 
that what was called nebulous matter, clouds of 
star-dust, was stars away in the distance ; “and 
also that there is unoccupied space, enough for 
millions of worlds as large as ours, and there¬ 
fore, the fact that worlds do not exist by their own 
nature, and of necessity x wherever there is room 
for them. In these facts of observation by means 
of improved telescopes the nebular theory of 
creation is broken down and lost.” The orderly 
existence of planets just where they are implies 
will, design and intelligence. 

The laws of motion require that a body pro¬ 
jected must continue in a straight line or di¬ 
rection from the projecting force, unless some¬ 
thing, outside of itself, comes in contact with it, 
changing its course. This law is violated in the 
movements of all the planets and heavenly bodies. 
Here mechanical law is routed, and physical 
force excluded. 

The orderly, continuous and circuitous move¬ 
ment of the planets is against the physical force 
theory. To affirm that matter moves itself after 
the manner of planetary movements is an insult 


6 


CREATION WITH INTELLIGENCE. 


to common sense, and contrary to observation as 
connected with the movements of all earthly 
things. When the law of projectiles makes and 
projects a cannon ball, and continues its move¬ 
ment in space in an elliptical orbit, then we 
may believe that the law of mechanics and the 
physical forces made the worlds and moves 
them. 

The continuous movement of all the heavenly 
bodies requires, of necessity, an ever-present om¬ 
nipotence. Law is not creator; it is a rule of 
action, requiring an intelligence behind it to see 
that it is executed or enforced. The laws of na¬ 
ture are the art of God. The physical forces, so- 
called, are not powers rising out of inertia, hav¬ 
ing the guardianship of all things. Above, be¬ 
low, and all around is omnipotence—God him¬ 
self, speaking to us in a language which the Chris¬ 
tian heart may understand. “The invisible 
things of Him from the creation of the world are 
clearly seen, being understood by the things 
which are made, even His eternal power and 
divinity.” The explosive theory of creation 
originated with Buffon ; he agreed with La Place 
that all our worlds were in the same fire-cloud of 
nebulous matter—the sun. He introduces for 
our consideration a comet striking the sun 
obliquely, projecting to a distance a torrent of the 
matter of which it was composed, just as a stone 
thrown obliquely into a basin of water causes it 


CREATION WITH INTELLIGENCE. 


7 


to splash out. The torrent of matter in a fused 
state broke up into parts enough to make all the 
primary planets and moons, stars and comets of 
our universe. These parts and fragments were 
arrested at different distances from the sun, ac¬ 
cording to their density, or the impetus they re¬ 
ceived, and by rotary motion, forever violating 
the laws of motion, they became globes. Of 
course they were arrested at different distances 
from the sun without being stopped in their 
movement, and condensing by cold they became 
opake, solid planets, moons and stars. This ac¬ 
cidental chance formation of worlds gives no rea¬ 
son for the form of their orbits, nor what it was 
that arrested them in the distance without stop¬ 
ping them, nor for their rotary motion on their 
axis in one direction, with the exception of the 
moons of Uranus. And it leaves us curious to 
know where the splashing material came from, 
and how it was melted down into a fluid state 
ready to be splashed. We are also anxious to 
know where the comet came from, and what 
drove it so correctly through space as to hit the 
sun so obliquely. To-day there are unbelievers 
in the Christian religion who advocate this fool¬ 
ish theory. Buffon’s theory received a little lift 
with its advocates when the discovery of five 
small planets was made. 

There is a certain proportion observed in the 
distances of the orbits of the planets from each 


8 


CREATION WITH INTELLIGENCE. 


other, a width of the gauge, as it were, on the 
celestial railway. This was the width of a track 
between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. On this 
track no train was seen moving until the five 
little planets were discovered upon it. This ex¬ 
cited the curiosity of astronomers, and they sup¬ 
posed that some greater planet had exploded. 
Three of these small planets were discovered in 
the first seven years of this century. And Dr. 
Obler, the discoverer of Pallas, one of the five, 
finding that they were nearly in the same track, 
but sometimes crossing each the other’s path, 
and that they were very small, bearing about the 
proportion to a regular planet that a hand-car 
does to a freight locomotive, imagined that they 
were formed by the explosion of a larger planet, 
that the boiler of the locomotive had bursted, 
and the fragments had lit on the track, in the 
shape of hand-cars, and resolved to keep run¬ 
ning and do the business of the line. 

But thinking men wanted to know why the 
exploded locomotive was not seen on the track 
before the explosion. And how it was that an 
explosion should create such beautiful orderly 
planets running regularly and wisely all by 
chance or accident. No mansion was ever blown 
into handsome cottages, nor ship at sea blown 
into life-boats, nor exploding engines blown into 
model engines, but the theory retired the All-wise 
Creator, and became somewhat popular among 


CREATION WITH INTELLIGENCE. 


the enemies of the Bible. But astronomers soon 
discovered that every small planet and every 
little star had a track of its own ; and every new 
discovery augmented the difficulties in the way 
of Buffon’s theory, until it is no longer a ques¬ 
tion in astronomy. 

It is now a settled fact that the most unsub¬ 
stantial clouds that float in the highest regions of 
the air, if they were actually fire-clouds, would be 
dense and massive bodies in comparison with the 
texture of a comet .—HerscheVs Outlines of 1853 , p. 
558. The science of astronomy confounds all 
the speculations of men put up in the face of God, 
against his right to possess and govern his own 
homestead. The order and regularity of plane¬ 
tary movements speak as much for intelligence 
behind them as any old stone ax or chipped flint? 
Yes ! A thousand times more. La Place found 
upon calculation the chances, by the formula of 
probabilities, were two millions to one against the 
regularities happening by accident, or chance, 
and four millions to one in favor of a common 
origin. The rotation of the sun being the central 
point, he thought, if he could account for this he 
could explain all the rest. He went to work and 
got up his theory, of which we have already 
spoken. It is now known that the sun is not a 
fire-cloud, but a dark body surrounded with a 
belt of light, just as the Hebrew expresses it in 


10 


CREATION WITH INTELLIGENCE. 


the first chapter of Genesis, “Two great light 
bearers.” 

The theory called the nebular theory origi¬ 
nated in astronomical ignorance of stars away in 
the distance, which seemed to be so close togeth¬ 
er, owing to their great distance from us, that 
they were regarded as nebulous matter, or star 
dust. Herschel’s large telescope resolved the 
“milky way” into a bed of stars away off in the 
vast deep of the great expanse, and when Lord 
Ross’s great telescope was turned to the heavens 
the nebula all proved to be stars projected against 
a dark sky .—North British Review, No. 3, p. 477. 
So the La Place theory of creation is, by observa¬ 
tion, forever destroyed. Then let us introduce 
something better upon which axioms can stand 
and which has always been abreast of sci¬ 
entific discoveries in its scientific allusions, which 
are flashes of light away in the darkness of the 
past, undiscovered for centuries. It is the testi¬ 
mony of that old book, called the Bible. It says : 
“In the beginning God created the heavens and 
the earth.” This points to the shores of an eter¬ 
nity in the past. And it is worthy of notice that 
it is not formation, but creation ; formation was 
subsequent to creation. This beginning lies be¬ 
yond the grasp of the human intellect, beyond 
all calculations. It is the statement of a fact. 
Scientific discoveries will never be able to place 
any certain number of years where it does not 


CREATION WITH INTELLIGENCE. 


11 


exist in thought expressed, neither in science, 
nor in the Bible. No record in the rocks, or in the 
Bible, or chronology in or out of the Bible, will 
carry us back to the beginning. The first verse 
of the first chapter of Genesis states a fact in 
such a manner as to place it beyond calculation 
and scientific refutation. 

The Bible, in its scientific allusions, was al¬ 
ways ahead of scientific discoveries. Three 
thousand years before the trade-winds were un¬ 
derstood, before Maury discovered the rotation 
and revolutions of the wind currents, it was writ¬ 
ten, “The wind goeth towards the south, and 
turneth about to the north. And the wind re- 
turneth again according to his circuits.”— Eccl., 
1:6. Thousands of years before Copernicus, or 
Newton, or Galileo were born, Isaiah said of the 
Infinite One, “It is He that sitteth upon the 
circle, of the earth.”— Isaiah, 1^0:22. And John 
wrote of creatures in heaven, and on the earth, 
and under the earth, recognizing the fact that 
both sides of the earth were inhabited.— Rev., 
5:13. Wisdom is personified in Prov., 8 :24 to 
26, in these words, “I was set up from ever¬ 
lasting, from the beginning or ever the earth 
was. When there were no depths I was brought 
forth ; when there were no fountains abounding 
with water; before the mountains were settled, 
before the hills was I brought forth, while as yet 
He had not made the earth, nor the highest part 


12 


CREATION WITH INTELLIGENCE. 


of the dust of the world.” In the geological rec¬ 
ord mountains rise and settle, and in this century 
it has been discovered that the oldest formation 
of the rocky stratas lies upon the highest moun¬ 
tain top. In the ninetieth psalm the man of 
God glances at the primeval mountains, monu¬ 
ments of God’s work, and sings, “Before the 
mountains were brought forth, or ever Thou 
hadst formed the earth and the universe, even 
from everlasting to everlasting, Thou art God.” 
This word “beginning” is one of the most ap¬ 
propriate titles of the Infinite Creator, for the 
reason that he is the great first cause or ultimate 
in the analysis of creation. In the Bible it is 
said, “I am the beginning and the ending, saith 
the Lord, who is, and was, and is to come— The 
Almighty.” 


DESIGN IN NATURE. 


Webster defines the term “design” thus : 1. A 
plan or representation of a thing by an outline ; 
sketch ; general view; first idea represented by 
visible lines, as in painting or architecture. 2. 
A scheme or plan in the mind. A wise man is 
distinguished by the judiciousness of his designs. 
3. Purpose ; intention ; aim ; implying a scheme 
or plan in the mind. “This active mind infused 
through all the space unites and mingles with 
the mighty mass.”— Dryden. 

Voltaire said : “Benedict Spinoza is compelled 
to acknowledge an intelligence presiding over all. 
Had he denied this I should have said to him : 
Benedict, you are a fool; you possess intelligence, 
and you deny it? It will be observed and in¬ 
sisted upon by some, that if a statue or a watch 
were shown to a savage who had never seen 
them, he would certainly acknowledge that they 
were the products of some intelligent agent, more 
powerful and ingenious than himself, and we are 
equally bound to acknowledge that the universe, 
and the phenomena of nature are the productions 
of an agent whose intelligence and powers are far 
superior to our own. ’ ’ He further said : “ If a clock 
is not made to tell the time of the day, I will ad- 


14 


DESIGN IN NATURE. 


mit that final causes are nothing but chimeras, 
and be content to go by the name of a fool to the 
end of my life. All the parts of our great world 
seem made for each other.” 

Epicurus and Lucretius tell us the eye is not 
made to see, but that since it was found out that 
eyes were capable of being used for that purpose 
they have been applied to that purpose. Ac¬ 
cording to them the mouth is not formed to speak, 
and eat, nor the stomach to digest, nor the heart 
to receive the blood from the veins and impel it 
through the arteries, nor the feet to walk, nor the 
ears to hear, yet at the same time these very 
shrewd and consistent persons admitted that 
tailors made garments to clothe them, and that 
masons built houses to lodge them, and thus 
ventured to deny to nature what they conceded 
to the most insignificant artists employed by 
themselves. M. le Prieur, in the Spectacle of 
Nature, says the tides were attached to the ocean 
to enable the vessels to enter more easily into 
their ports, and to preserve the water from cor¬ 
ruption ; he might just as well have urged that 
legs were made to wear boots, and noses to bear 
spectacles. 

In order to satisfy ourselves of the truth of a 
final cause, in any particular instance, it is neces¬ 
sary that the effect produced should be universal 
and invariable in time and place. Ships have 
not existed in all times, nor upon all seas ; so it 


DESIGN IN NATURE. 


15 


can not be said that the ocean was made for 
ships. It is impossible not to perceive how ri¬ 
diculous it would be to maintain that nature 
had toiled on from the very earliest period of 
time to adjust herself to the inventions of our 
fortuitous and arbitrary arts, all of which are of 
so late a date in our discoveries, but it is per¬ 
fectly clear that if noses were not made for specta¬ 
cles, they were made for smelling, and there 
have been noses ever since there were men. In 
the same manner hands, instead of being be¬ 
stowed for the sake of gloves, are certainly 
destined for all those uses to which the metacar¬ 
pus, the phalanx of the fingers and the move¬ 
ments of the wrist render them applicable. 
Cicero, who doubted every thing else, had no 
doubt about final causes. It appears particularly 
difficult to suppose that those parts of the human 
frame, by which the perpetuation of the species 
is conducted, should not, in fact, have been in¬ 
tended and destined for that purpose. It is, as 
it appears to me, willfully to shut the eyes and 
the understanding to assert that there is no 
design in nature ; and if there is design there is 
an intelligent cause—a God.” 

The chain of mountains thrown around our 
great continent as water breaks, protecting our 
agricultural interests, and the rivers and streams 
fertilizing the fields to supply us with refresh¬ 
ments and give growth and beauty to vegetable 


16 


DESIGN IN NATURE. 


and animal life, appear no more to result from 
a concourse of dead atoms than the retina which 
receives the rays of light, or the crystalline 
humor which refracts it, or the drum of the ear 
which admits sounds, or the circulation of the 
blood in our veins, the systole and diastole of the 
heart, the regulating principle of life. It looks 
as though a man was destitute of intelligence 
who would deny that stomachs are made for di¬ 
gestion, and that eyes are made to see, and ears 
are made to hear, and that legs are made to walk. 

When effects are invariably the same at all 
times and in all places, and are not the creatures 
of the beings to which they attach, then there is 
visibly a final cause. Animals have eyes and 
see, have ears and hear, have mouths with which 
they eat, a stomach, or something similar, by 
which they digest their food, and suitable means 
for expelling the refuse, have organs for the con¬ 
tinuation of their species; and these natural 
gifts accomplish their regular work without any 
appliances or intermixtures of art. Here there 
must be clearly established a final cause ; to deny 
a truth so well known throughout nature seems 
like a perversion of the faculties of common 
sense. These things are uniform, and are the 
immediate work of their author. 

Who fixed the laws by which the moon con¬ 
tributes three-fourths of the flux and reflux of the 
ocean, and the sun the remaining fourth? Who 


DESIGN IN NATURE. 


17 


gave a rotary motion to the sun, in consequence 
of which it communicates its rays of light in the 
short time of seven minutes and a half to the eyes 
of man? 

Chance is a word void of sense ; nothing can 
exist without a cause. The world is arranged 
according to mathematical laws, therefore it is 
arranged by an intelligence infinitely superior to 
man. Does such a being necessarily exist? It 
must be so ; for he must either have received his 
being from another, or be self-existent through 
his own nature. If through another, then we 
must look up to this other, which would in that 
case be the first cause ; so, on whichever side I 
turn I must admit a first cause, powerful and in¬ 
telligent, who, by his own nature, is necessarily 
the. first cause. Kepler rendered his name illus¬ 
trious in the annals of science by developing the 
laws which regulate the motions of the planets. 
Assisted by the Danish philosopher, Tycho Brahe, 
he made these discoveries : 

I. That the six primary planets known in his 
times moved around the sun in ellipses, having 
the sun in one of the foci, or central points. 

II. That the planets describe round the sun 
equal areas in equal times. 

III. That the squares of the periodical times 
in which the planets revolve around the sun are 
as the cubes of their mean distance from the sun. 
This discovery is found to be of great use in 

2 


18 


DESIGN IN NATURE. 


astronomical calculations, for if the periodical 
times of two planets be given, and the distance 
of one of them from the center, the other may 
be found by the rule of proportion. A universe 
of such order must have a supreme intelligence 
presiding over it. It could not possibly be a 
world of chance, nor of mere physical forces, be¬ 
cause its movements are a continual violation of 
the known laws of motion, as they are seen in 
connection with physical forces. The planets 
move as they ever have, while it is a law that a 
body projected will as certainly come to a state 
of rest, unless an infinite power with purpose, 
will and intention be with it to keep it moving. 
Again, it is a law of motion that a body will con¬ 
tinue in a straight line from the projecting force, 
unless it comes in contact with something outside 
of itself changing its course. This law is vio¬ 
lated in the movement of every planet known in 
the heavens ; they all move in their ellipses, have 
their “circles.”— Isaiah, ^0:22. 

By the middle of the sixteenth century the 
word “science” made its appearance, denoting 
connected and demonstrated knowledge, in oppo¬ 
sition to art, which signified digested rules of 
operation, not connected with each other by de¬ 
duction from common first principles.— Zell’s En¬ 
cyclopedia. So first principles, or first truths or 
axioms, are the ultimates or final causes in every 
science. 


DESIGN IN NATURE. 


19 


The natural sciences deal with cause and effect. 
An effect that always results from the same cause 
we call a natural law. Our knowledge of uni¬ 
form effects is our knowledge of natural laws, 
and these are the first principles or foundation of 
the natural sciences—the ultimates of the sci¬ 
ences. And the ultimate of these laws is an in¬ 
telligent agent, whose rules of action in nature 
are these very laws of nature. The laws of na¬ 
ture are the art of God. 

Law, in and of itself, is nothing ; does nothing. 
The very word requires an agent behind it to en¬ 
force it. 

Nature is full of contrivances. 

Who contrived? 

Nature is full of adaptations. 

Who adapted? 

Nature is full of correllations. 

Who correllated? 

Nature is full of the conservation of forces. 

Who conserves? 

The contriver designs. 

The one who correllates, designs ; the one who 
conserves the forces, designs. 

Wherever intelligence discovers contrivance, 
or correllations, or adaptations, or conservation 
of forces, there consciousness, which is the ac¬ 
credited basis of all evidence, testifies to an om¬ 
nipotent intelligence as the only sufficient agent. 
To deny this is to destroy the foundation of all 


20 


DESIGN IN NATURE. 


justice, as it is administered in all the civil 
courts in Christendom, throughout the civilized 
world. If the sun had been made to afford 
greater light the eye would have been useless, or 
made differently. If the heat which we attrib¬ 
ute to the sun had been greatly augmented our 
bodies could not have endured it. If domestic 
apimals had been endowed with reason they 
would not have served us at all. All created 
things are graduated upon a divine scale. 

It is a fact that even the evidences of the Chris¬ 
tian religion are adjusted upon a certain wise and 
benevolent scale, amounting to a maximum be¬ 
yond which they do not extend. Had they gone 
further all excellency in faith would have been 
destroyed. Had they fallen short every mouth 
could not have been stopped. While a small 
portion of the evidences is sufficient for some, it 
is all necessary for others. Those who do not 
believe upon the whole of it, and have one ob¬ 
jection remaining when the whole is examined, 
that which would remove this one objection would 
destroy every virtue and excellency of faith, 
there would be nothing moral about it; it would 
be as unavoidable as the motions of a mill-wheel 
under a powerful head of water, or as the waving 
of tree tops beneath a whirlwind.” Such would 
have placed morality and spirituality upon the 
plane of emotional insanity, upon the plane of 
mechanical necessity. Compulsory faith is neither 


DESIGN IN NATURE. 


21 


praiseworthy nor blameworthy, it is neither vice 
nor virtue. Paul said : “ If I do that I would 

not it is no more I that do it.” 

Man with nought in charge could betray no trust, 

And if he fell would fall because he must. 

If love reward him or vengeance strike, 

His recompense in both would be unjust alike. 

The man who wants compulsory faith, over 
which the will has no control, requires that kind 
of evidence which is incompatible with all moral 
virtue and goodness, for he would make belief 
like the fall of a volcanic stone. 

The substitution of blind physical forces for the 
Creator of the heavens and of the earth, and 
spontaneous generation of life from dead atoms 
and natural selection, for the banishment of de¬ 
sign from nature, will never meet the demands of 
common intelligence. The contrasts along the 
assumed line of the evolution of higher species 
from the lower, in the comparative anatomy of 
bodies, is a refutation of the hypothesis. The 
magnitude of this contrast is so great that all 
minds, both those on the one side and on the 
other, are compelled to acknowledge that the 
“missing link” is wanting, and this is a com¬ 
plete breakdown in the evolutionary speculation. 
The contrast between the intellectual powers of 
man and the instinctive powers of beasts, made 
for man’s use, shows design in creation. 

Man carries with him the characteristics of 


22 


DESIGN IN NATURE. 


sovereignty, necessary to liis lordship over the 
lower kingdoms of nature. His body is so con¬ 
stituted as to enable him to execute the purposes 
of his mind, and bring everything within his 
reach which can minister to his wants and 
pleasures. Is man’s dignity to be confounded 
with that of quadrupeds? The very idea is one 
of the strangest productions of the human imag¬ 
ination. It seems to indicate that the accumu¬ 
lated facts of our age have gone altogether be¬ 
yond its capacity for generalization ; and if it 
was not for the vigor seen everywhere it might 
be taken as an evidence that the human mind 
has fallen into a state of senility, and in its dot¬ 
age mistaken for science the imaginations which 
were the dreams of its youth. The greatest fal¬ 
lacy is the assumption of natural selection as a 
cause ; in nature it is not a cause at all. Its ad¬ 
vocates call it the survival of the fittest, and 
allowing this to be true it is only a set of condi¬ 
tions, a method of intelligent will. But we have 
no proof that even this is a method by which in¬ 
telligent will causes a transmutation of species. 
We have many proofs opposed to the hypothesis. 

Neither can direct physical influences proceed¬ 
ing from the environment be viewed in the light 
of efficient causes of biological phenomena; for 
they, too, are only a set of conditions ; we may 
denominate them conditioning influences, but 
even this implies a conditioning cause. The effi- 


DESIGN IN NATURE. 


23 


cient force producing modifications having refer¬ 
ence to physical surroundings, is not only a force 
acting within, it is a force acting intelligently, 
and beneficently ; and if it be demanded how we 
dare attribute intelligence and beneficence to a 
force so hopelessly inscrutable, we demand of the 
objector how he dare dishonor the deepest intui¬ 
tions of his own soul, and brave all the conse¬ 
quences of so doing.— WincheVs Evolution , pp. 
96 , 97. 

Design in nature is recognized by those who 
deny it; their endeavor to personify the “forces 
of nature” is continually breaking down their 
denial. The universality of the idea of purpose 
in nature is indicated by the universal tendency 
of such men to personify the forces by which it 
is claimed all natural phenomena are produced. 
It is a great injustice to scientific men to suspect 
them of unwillingness to accept the idea of a Cre¬ 
ator because they try to keep the language of the 
sciences separate from the language of theology, 
and it is interesting to observe their failure. 

It is impossible in describing physical phenom¬ 
ena to avoid the phraseology which identifies 
them with the phenomena of mind, and is 
molded on our conscious personality. Take the 
word “contrivance” for an example. How could 
science do without it? How could the subject of 
animal mechanics be scientifically dealt with 
without continual reference to law , as that by 


24 


DESIGN IN NATURE. 


which and through which special organs are 
formed for doing special work. It is impossible 
to describe or explain the facts we meet with in 
any science without investing the laws of nature 
with something of that personality which they do 
actually reflect, without conceiving of them as 
partaking of those attributes of mind which we 
everywhere recognize in their working results.— 
Argyle's Reign of Law , p. 87. 

Mr. Tyndall says: “The problem of the con¬ 
nection between body and soul is as insoluble in 
its modern form as it was in the pre-scientific 
ages. There ought to be clear distinction made 
between science in the stage of hypothesis (as¬ 
sumption) and science in the state of fact. 
* * * I share Virchow’s opinion that the 

theory of evolution in its complete form involves 
the assumption that at some period or other of 
the earth’s history there occurred what would be 
now called spontaneous generation. I agree with 
him that the proof of it is still wanting. I hold 
with Virchow that the failures have been lament¬ 
able, that the doctrine is utterly discredited.” 

It is an underlying or first belief that governs 
all our courts, in their estimate of evidence, that 
things are as our senses report them to us. It 
lies at the beginning of all scientific reasoning. 
In all courts it is the basis of all credible evi¬ 
dence, the power of conscious knowledge under¬ 
lies all judicial decisions. It is the essential 


DESIGN IN NATURE. 


25 


qualification of all qualified witnesses, but it is 
worth no more when it testifies to the reports 
which our senses make to it, than it is when it 
testifies that intelligent correllations imply in¬ 
telligence, and that contrivances and adaptations 
of means to ends imply intelligence. All rational 
beings concede this to be true until their at¬ 
tention is called to matters of religion. Even 
secularists have made a great ado over the old 
stone ax and chips of flint. If we accept the 
proposition, as do the courts, that things are as 
our senses report them to us, then, if we do not 
condemn ourselves in that thing which we allow, 
we must accept design in nature ; otherwise we 
act the part of unreasonable men. 


A LIVING INTELLIGENCE OR DEAD 
ATOMS, WHICH? 


The double nature of man is the only key that 
unlocks and opens the way to a correct under¬ 
standing of his character. And the incorporeal 
substance theory of the origin of the universe is 
the only theory that will sustain the axioms of 
science. 

The physical-force theory is an utter failure in 
the philosophy of life, sensation, consciousness, 
understanding and free will. If the forces of 
dead atoms, inherent in the atoms, were the 
cause of all things, the creative cause, then they 
were without anything to stand upon—were the 
mechanical powers of an unmade machine in 
process of making itself. From whence came 
life? Not from matter, for it was dead—inertia 
characterized our planet when it was no more 
than a mineral kingdom. And even admitting 
that physical forces existed at that time they 
were inadequate to the production of life with 
all the attributes of a living intelligence. Life is 
not from the physical forces of dead atoms. 
These could not place a thing never having had 
an existence where it was not, for a thing can 
not exist—be, and not exist-—not be, at the same 


A LIVING INTELLIGENCE. 


27 


time. To get a vital force out of a dead thing 
without a vital force to act upon it is like raising 
a dead body to life by the stroke of a mace. Vital 
forces stand upon vital nature, and physical 
forces stand upon physical nature. So the phys¬ 
ical forces were not before physical nature, and 
for that very reason they could not have been the 
creative cause of physical nature. The advo¬ 
cates of the physical-force theory of creation say 
they can’t believe that the dead body of the Naza- 
rene was raised to life, but they can believe that 
all things which live were raised from the dead 
mineral kingdom by the physical forces of that 
kingdom. 

It is an impossibility for the forces of a thing 
to exist before the thing itself exists. There are 
two legs to this universe of ours, one is the in¬ 
corporeal and the other the corporeal. A man 
trying to get through the sciences on the cor¬ 
poreal leg alone is in a worse predicament than 
the man who has nothing but cork legs. Try to 
get away with the law of biogenesis—that life 
only produces life. You can’t get any more out 
of anything than there is in it. 

When you go back to the dead mineral king¬ 
dom you are standing on the shores of a gulf, 
which you will never cross by the light of the 
materialistic philosophy, with a number of axioms 
in your mind which your philosophy condemns 
as false while your intuitive knowledge, or com- 


28 


A LIVING INTELLIGENCE. 


mon sense, tells you they are the most certain of 
all truths. 

The human mind is so noble that it abhors a 
contradiction, and this fact has been called a law 
of mind, because of its being universally so. The 
Bible records, and especially the fundamental 
principles of the Christian religion, are in deadly 
conflict with the physical-force philosophy of 
the creation of all things. They contradict each 
other. 

It is natural for materialistic secularists to say, 
science contradicts the Bible simply because the 
Bible contradicts them. Matter is their only 
substance, their all, the only basis for either 
science or religion. Some of them tell us, life 
is only a modification of matter. This is the 
best that atheists can say, and it does not help 
them out of their troubles, for there must be the 
modifier, and there must be that which condi¬ 
tions ; both modification and condition are effects. 
And it is known in science that life modifies and 
conditions, changing dead matter into living or¬ 
ganic nature. We have one condition of matter 
in the horns of animals, another in the wool upon 
the sheep’s back, and still another in hair upon 
the horse. What is it that conditions matter so 
very differently in different things? The horse 
and sheep are both ruminants, live on the same 
kinds of food. The sheep has a fore-stomach— 
chews his cud, but the horse has no fore-stomach, 


A LIVING INTELLIGENCE. 


29 


chews no cud ; he has no contrivance for that 
kind of business. Why this difference? Answer, 
the Great Contriver made it so. He is the living 
intelligence who would have it so. No life, no 
modification. No life, no contrivance. No life, 
no diversity of conditions with one and the same 
substance. No life, no modifications. Life puts 
matter into the condition of living. Mind differ¬ 
entiates conditions. 

The last link in the causal chain or analysis of 
life is will as existing in the incorporeal nature. 
Will lies along the mental line of existence all 
the way back to the original will, which lies be¬ 
hind all living beings. This is, so far as the will 
of man, at least, is concerned a matter of con¬ 
scious knowledge, and we may say of it, as we do 
of life itself : There is no will without antecedent 
will. The law that life only produces life carries 
along with it the attributes of the living person¬ 
ality ; no will without antecedent will; no mind 
without antecedent mind ; no moral nature with¬ 
out antecedent moral nature, and no matter with¬ 
out antecedent substance, and all this is in har¬ 
mony with the axiom, “out of nothing, nothing 
comes.” 

The heavenly Father of spirits is called “the 
king eternal, immortal, invisible.” In this quo¬ 
tation the original term for duration is in the 
plural form, and is to be understood as asserting 
that He is king of both eternities, the past as 


30 


A LIVING INTELLIGENCE. 


well as the future ; in fact, the king of all the 
ages. Eternal substance, and an eternal incorpo¬ 
real Intelligence there was, and is, and forever 
will be. 

Here we dismiss a batch of infidel nonsense, 
such as, “A God sitting away back yonder, hav¬ 
ing nothing, seems so lonely.” The mighty God 
is called the everlasting Father, which is a part 
of the name which our Savior, Jesus Christ, in¬ 
herited. See Heb., No antecedent father, 

no offspring. This holds good in the world of 
spirits. 

Things which are seen were not made of things 
which do appear. Heb., 11:3. No incorporeal 
nature, no corporeal nature. No incorporeal 
nature, no life. The body without the spirit is 
dead, being alone. Life is not a property of 
matter, for in this case it would be found where- 
ever and whenever matter is found, and this 
would forever destroy the distinction between 
the living organic kingdoms of nature and the 
old dead mineral kingdom over which the waters 
of the silurian age rolled their billows. Life is 
incomprehensible, and therefore undefinable ; it 
is a simple, and therefore can not be simplified; 
it has in itself nothing in common with dead 
matter. To affirm that it has would destroy the 
distinction between a man and a corpse. Dead 
matter has no efficient power to place itself upon 


A LIVING INTELLIGENCE. 


31 


the throne, or even to perpetuate the species it 
represented while in a state of life. 

The advocates of the physical-force philosophy 
of all things go away back, in thought, along 
their hypothetical evolutionary line, saying, it 
took millions of years to bring about the present 
condition of things, while science teaches us that 
at a comparative recent period our earth was too 
hot for the existence of organic life upon its sur¬ 
face. And then for our ancestral fathers, they 
refer us to the weak, senseless, headless, bone¬ 
less Ascidians, which exist to-day along our own 
shores in our great waters. 

And here they tell us “conscience originated 
from the pleasures and pains of our far away 
Ascidian forefathers.” Can it be possible that 
men of sense will accept the headless, boneless 
Ascidian as the source of anatomy, physiology, 
and psychology? Oh ! they have also gone away 
back to the dead mud of the mineral kingdom ; 
to the mud of the Nile ; to the sun’s rays fall¬ 
ing upon sea slime, anywhere will do for them! 
So down goes the axiom, that “you can get no 
more out of a thing than there is in it.” They 
go back until they get away from father and 
mother, away from axioms, away from involu¬ 
tion behind evolution, and away from God, and 
claim years enough to place them in the internal 
heat of mother earth. And all this to make out 
their case. 


32 


A LIVING INTELLIGENCE. 


I suggest that person never was involved in 
thing, and therefore never was evolved out of 
thing. By the way, what is the difference be¬ 
tween getting more out of a thing than there is 
in it and creating something of nothing? The 
old Greek Anaximander, who was born 610 years 
before the Christ, was the author of the idea that 
our forefathers were submarine molusks, without 
heads, bones or limbs. After an unknown time, 
or a few millions of years, their offspring got out 
on land and lost their qualifications for living 
under the water, and during a long period of time 
swung tails; but after awhile threw their tails 
way and appeared as men—yes, were really men, 
no longer going on all fours but walking upright, 
But the original fellows were lost “in South Af¬ 
rica,” or somewhere “in a sunken continent 
south of Asia,” so that the missing link has never 
been found. There are a lot of things here yet 
with tails and ribs all loose, walking on all fours, 
evolving no new species, and in their native 
homes, living in the bushes. And now the only 
use we have for them is to place their pictures in 
our high school books, showing their regular ad¬ 
vance up to manhood. 

Oh ! When will our learned men cease to per¬ 
petuate their folly in the schools of our country? 
“Oh, the link is missing,” but we will bridge 
the gulf with monkeys—a bridge of forty spans, 
the largest gorilla brain ever discovered being 


A LIVING INTELLIGENCE. 


33 


thirty cubic inches and the smallest human brain 
being seventy cubic inches, forty cubic inches 
being the difference. Man has a ball under his 
great toe, with three tendons entering into it to 
give him a spring, while none of the monkey 
tribes have a like contrivance. If any man 
thinks he is descended from an ape, lost or liv¬ 
ing, he ought to keep his opinion to himself, and 
not slander his forefathers. Elihu said : “There 
is a spirit in man and the inspiration of the Al¬ 
mighty giveth them understanding.”— Job, 32:8. 
“The spirit of God hath made me, and the breath 
of the Almighty hath given me life.”— Job, 33:1^. 

The term sperma-to-zoa is composed of two 
words, sperma and zoon. Zoon is the genitive 
of zao. From this root zao the Greeks got their 
word Zeus —God, and the Romans got their term 
Jupiter from the same. So we are very"near the 
throne when we get to this little word zao and 
its genitive zoo. Zao is defined by the word life, 
and the Greek word zoe-life is of the same family. 
There is something wonderful in this little word 
zao. 

The spermatic fluid is the medium of connec¬ 
tion between the living spirit and organic nature. 
The nervo-vital fluid is the investient of the spirit 
of life. It is the medium of connection between 
the incorporeal spirit and the corporeal organism. 
When the nervo-vital fluid does not circulate in 
the lower limbs they shrink away, because the 
3 


34 


A LIVING INTELLIGENCE. 


assimilation of food ceases in those parts of the 
body. The nervo-vital fluid is the reality that is 
the foundation of the beautiful figure, “Water of 
Life.” The light intended in the figure is in the 
fact used as a figure. The nervo-vital fluid is the 
fact. In the vegetable kingdom the life is in the 
sap. No sap, no growth. All life in the king¬ 
doms of nature is the result of union with invisi¬ 
ble and incorporeal nature which we sometimes 
call spiritual nature. Life is the result of union 
with God in every department of His government, 
and this union is through incorporeal and invisi¬ 
ble nature, differentiated by Him, and from Him. 
Hence the law of biogenesis, that life only pro¬ 
duces life ; this law stands upon the existence of 
that eternal living Intelligence, in whom life is 
eternal. 

In the vegetable kingdom life is imparted to 
the germs by the pollen floating over the flowers, 
and by being carried and deposited upon them 
by the bees and insects that feed upon them. 
This fertilizing by brooding over is duplicated in 
the animal kingdom where there are no sexual 
organs. When the spirit of God moved upon the 
face of the waters * * * and the earth was 

liberated from her swaddling bands of cloud and 
thick darkness, her waters were filled with life. It 
was said to the virgin, the mother of the Nazar- 
ene, “The holy spirit shall come upon thee, and 
the power of the Highest shal] overshadow thee.” 


A LIVING INTELLIGENCE. 


35 


Some years ago a noted secularist, and advocate 
of Darwin’s theory, attended a preachers’ meeting 
in Ohio, and being asked to talk he said the rea¬ 
son he never could believe, as the preachers, was 
because the immutable laws of nature required 
two parents to produce an offspring, whereas the 
Nazarene had but one. I read this in the report 
of the meeting, and it immediately occurred to 
me that he was mistaken about the Nazarene 
having but one parent, being ignorant of the 
facts of science, that germs were fertilized in 
both the vegetable and animal kingdoms without 
the use of sexual organs. And even if his state¬ 
ment were true as respects the general rule, the 
objection is futile in the presence of the infinite 
Creator. But how a man can talk thus and ad¬ 
vocate Darwinism is incomprehensible to me, 
seeing that such men profess to believe the very 
opposite when they talk about the origin of spe¬ 
cies in connection with their assumed units lying 
at the beginning of their evolutionary series. 
And such men as deny to nature a personal God, 
assuming that all sprang in the first instance from 
atoms dead as grains of shot—-such men are the 
most credulous persons; the faith they have in 
their speculations is the most blind imaginable. 
They can believe without evidence, and against 
evidence. 

Those who deny the laws of biogenesis by 
denying the existence of eternal life in God, must 


36 


A LIVING INTELLIGENCE. 


allow that the immutable laws of nature began 
the entire series of living beings with but one 
parent, and that one parent something like a 
mollusk in old ocean’s bottom, wholly unlike any 
ape, to say nothing of man. A theory hung 
upon a thousand ifs, instead of immutuable laws. 
I have said, all men live by faith, but there is a 
wonderful difference in that in which they be¬ 
lieve. If we were deprived of all that we have 
by faith we would have comparatively little left. 
We live by faith in the testimony of others, not 
one man in a hundred demonstrates. But we 
are glad to know that the best men of earth in a 
moral sense know enough about first truths or 
axioms to keep them from sinking in “the gulf 
of gulfs” which lies between the dead mineral 
and the organic kingdoms of life. Our common 
sense teaches us that there is something con¬ 
nected with our physical nature which changes 
dead matter into living organic nature. And 
this is all that took place when Adam’s body was 
made of the dust of the earth and had the breath 
of lives infused into his face.—See the original 
of Genesis, 2:7. “God formed man of the dust.” 

In the most distinct manner God shows us that 
man is a being, having a body and spirit dis¬ 
tinctly and separately created; the body out of 
the dust of the earth, the spirit immediately 
breathed from God himself. Does not this strongly 
mark that the spirit and body are not the same 


A LIVING INTELLIGENCE. 


37 


thing? The body derives its origin from the 
earth, or, as aphar implies, the dust; hence be¬ 
cause it is earthly it is decomposable and perish¬ 
able. Of the spirit it is said God breathed into 
his nostrils the breath of life ; nishmath chaiyim , 
the breath of lives, i. e ., animal and intellectual. 
While this breath of God expanded the lungs and 
set them in play, his inspiration gave both spirit 
and understanding .—Adam Clark. All scientists 
are compelled to admit that there was a time 
when dead matter took on life and form. And 
the power that caused it to do so once can do it 
again. The law “that life only produces life” 
underlies our religion as truly as it underlies ani¬ 
mal and vegetable existence. Life is of God. 
He differentiates in each and every case. In or¬ 
ganic nature bodies only perish, decay and go 
back to dust, while spirits return to God who 
gave them. 

There are two philosophies— the vital and 
the physical. The physical-force philosophy 
has matter for its only substance. The vital- 
force philosophy claims an incorporeal substance 
connected with matter. All well-informed Chris¬ 
tians indorse the vital-force philosophy, and all 
atheists and materialists indorse the physical- 
force theory. With them matter and its forces 
are the all of the universe. 

The advocates of the vital-force system say 
there is, ever was, and forever will be an incor- 


38 


A LIVING INTELLIGENCE. 


poreal nature connected with and permeating all 
living things in the visible organic kingdoms of 
vegetable and animal nature. And that our 
planet itself was thrown out from the invisible, 
so that things which are seen were made of un¬ 
seen things.— Heb ., 11 chap, and 3d verse. Again 
unseen things are eternal .—2 Cor., 1^: 18. De- 
mocrites said, “I am, therefore something is eter¬ 
nal,” recognizing the axiom, that out of nothing 
nothing comes ; that involution lies behind evolu¬ 
tion. 

The sacred scriptures never said that all things 
were made of nothing. An eternal living intel¬ 
ligence and an eternal, incorporeal substance are 
the poles of the universe. In reproduction, go¬ 
ing on in the vegetable and animal kingdoms, 
the life, which is the invisible builder, is some¬ 
thing which no chemist has ever been able to 
find or logically explain. It causes each germ 
to fall into the line of its own paternity, or spe¬ 
cies, and seems to be connected with mind some¬ 
where, because with a prophet’s eye it looks for¬ 
ward and provides in the old plant for the next 
generation ; it wraps food around the germ of the 
plant which supports the germ until the plant 
gets roots and leaves sufficient to gather its own 
food from earth and air. The great mystery of 
life in the vegetable kingdom is in the pollen 
floating over the flowers. A very wise man said : 
“Vegetable life is union with God in the vegeta- 


A LIVING INTELLIGENCE. 


39 


ble kingdom. His work is there, and the water 
of life is there ; it is in the flowing sap, which is 
the means of growth.” 

No chemist has been able to duplicate vegeta¬ 
ble nature with its qualities or properties. 
Nothing but the invisible life, in the germ and in 
the circulating sap, can make vegetable nature 
with its properties. All vegetable nature is 
thrown out from the invisible life of vegetable 
nature. The same is true in the animal king¬ 
dom. A chemist is always baffled when he 
undertakes to find an organic difference between 
fertilized and unfertilized eggs, because there 
is no difference, either in properties or propor¬ 
tions. All the organic matter that is in the one 
is in the other and in the same proportions, but 
life is in one and not in the other. You can kill 
fertilized eggs by putting them in cold water 
over night, or by piercing them with a needle. 
The truth is this, the life is inherent in an invisi¬ 
ble, incorporeal and incomprehensible nature. 
The term “life” is ultimate; beyond it you can 
not go. Its name is its only explanation. It is 
simple, therefore you can not simplify it; it is 
connected with corporeal nature, but it is not 
corporeal. We are in a world of incorporeal 
substances. Webster defines the term “incor¬ 
poreal” thus : Not having a material body ; not 
consisting of matter; immaterial. He adds: 
‘‘ Spirits are deemed incorporeal substance.’ ’ But 


40 


A LIVING INTELLIGENCE. 


why should I multiply words to prove the exist¬ 
ence of incorporeal nature? 

There is something in my body which dupli¬ 
cates the creative act by changing dead matter 
into living organic nature—a thing which no 
chemist can do. Animal nature comes from the 
invisible life in the spermatic fluid, which does 
its work by means of the circulating nervo-vital 
fluid. We know that a germ has life; and we 
know that life is incorporeal by the analysis of 
the fertilized and unfertilized eggs, and we know 
that the vital force changes dead matter into liv¬ 
ing organic nature by the law of assimilation. 
The life force, or germ builder, is from God, be¬ 
cause “He that built all things is God.”— Heb. 
3: “In, or by Him we live, move and have 

our being .”—Acts 17: *23-28. Do you say this 
logic makes me a part of God? You might as 
well say I am a part of my father, as say my 
spirit is a part of the father of spirits. We are 
his genos —genus. So Paul said, standing on the 
hill of Mars. This same man said, “We have 
had fathers of our flesh which corrected us * * * 
Should we not much rather be in subjection to 
the Father of Spirits and live?” When the or¬ 
ganism perishes the spirit returns to God who 
gave it. Galen and Plato both taught that the 
immediate organ, or instrument of sight, was a 
luciform and ethereal spirit. 

In the physical system the chemical and phys- 


A LIVING INTELLIGENCE. 


41 


ical agencies, or forces, disintegrating and tear¬ 
ing down, are, in a healthy state, overcome by the 
vital spirit, or living force, which has these phys¬ 
ical forces to contend with from the cradle to the 
grave. As long as the vital can keep the mastery 
we can live, but no longer. By this antagonism 
we ought to know that life is neither a chemical 
nor a physical force. The vital force is separate 
and distinct from the forces of the non-living 
world ; the fact that it builds all organisms dem¬ 
onstrates the truthfulness of this statement. And 
the chemical analysis of the two eggs, of which I 
have spoken, demonstrates the same. 

Voltaire says : “Sometimes a wish will arise in 
us to know how we think, though we seldom feel 
an inclination to know how we digest, or how we 
walk. I have interrogated my reason and asked 
what it is ? The question has always confounded 
me. * * * I have observed so great a differ¬ 

ence between my thoughts and my nourishment 
* * * that I have believed there was a sub¬ 

stance in me which reasoned and another which 
digested. However, in endeavoring always to 
prove to myself that we are two, I palpably felt 
that I am only one ; and that contradiction has 
always given me extreme pain. * * * I can 

not suppress the desire of being instructed ; and 
my disappointed curiosity is ever insatiable.” 


THE ORIGIN OF A CHRISTIAN IDEA. 


The word atom, from ha temno, not cut, was 
first used with an incorporeal currency to desig¬ 
nate a nature which no chemist can cut; in the 
times of Moses it expressed the Christian idea of 
all things being thrown out of the unseen, and in¬ 
corporeal nature. So that we are not alone if we 
entertain the idea that all organized nature stands 
upon the ground of incorporeal and eternal sub¬ 
stance. Moses taught the incorporeal atomic 
theory of creation. See Cud worth’s True Intel¬ 
lectual System of the Universe, Vol. I, pp. 90 
and 91. The proof is, Posidonius, an ancient 
and learned philosopher, Athenaeus, and Arce- 
rius, the publisher of Jamblichus, so testify. 
In Jamblichus Moses is called Moscus, a Phoe- 
necian, and also in another dialect called 
Moclius. Gassendi and Clerk Maxwell both as¬ 
sert that physical atoms are prepared material. 
But it is enough to know that the very term in 
its etymology contradicts the theory that the ori¬ 
gin of all things is from dead atoms of physical 
nature by means of physical forces. 

It seems strange that an advocate of the phys¬ 
ical-force theory of creation should choose the 
word atom in which to express his philosophy. 


THE ORIGIN OF A CHRISTIAN IDEA. 


43 


Democritus and Leucippus were the first to give 
the term a physical currency, and this they did 
in the interest of their atheism. There was a 
time when the germs of organic life were not on 
our planet , nor in its waters. At this point in 
time the lines are sharply drawn between life and 
death. Here we are on the shores of a dead 
mineral gulf—“the gulf of gulfs,” lying between 
life and universal death. Was there life on the 
other side of this gulf, and did it cross over? Or 
must we chain our boats to the shores and look 
back and be forever lost to the origin of life and 
intelligence ? Lost to moral nature and free will ? 
Can we cross this gulf by the light of dead atoms? 
Or by the light of the physical forces? Or by 
the light of the materialistic philosophy? 

In thought we stand upon the shores of uni¬ 
versal death and ask where is life? Where is 
mind and moral nature? Where is free will? 
The physical-force theory of creation answers 
none of these questions. Does involution lie be¬ 
hind evolution ? Then where were these things ? 
Were they in dead mindless matter, or were they 
in an all-wise creator? The law that life only 
produces life is as well established as any law in 
the universe. 

The very wise ones who are always talking 
their skepticism and unbelief, and advocating the 
physical-force theory have tried to cover all these, 
difficulties with the blanket of oblivion, by simply 


44 


THE ORIGIN OF A CHRISTIAN IDEA. 


calling them “the unknown.” Yes! they have 
a great deal to say about “the unknown seem 
to be very wise upon this subject. They have 
traveled so far into the unknown that they refuse 
to recognize a legitimate conclusion drawn from 
an axiom. 

Darwin comes to “the gulf of gulfs” and looks 
and reflects, saying, I have always been a deist, 
why should I refuse to cross over? I’ll not show 
myself so unscientific as to deny the law, that 
life only produces life, and that I know nothing 
about legitimate conclusions arising out of axi¬ 
oms. I’ll just say to all the world, that “science 
demands a miracle to give us the unit or units 
lying at the beginning of the series of evolution.” 
And so he crossed “the gulf of universal death” 
on the Christian’s boat, and took hold on that 
eternal life and intelligence, “whose divinity 
and power, from the beginning of the world, hath 
been clearly seen, being understood by the things 
which are made.” But it was not in Mr. Dar¬ 
win to be infallible, for he denied design in na¬ 
ture, losing sight of God again, and virtually 
contradicting himself, for design in nature is cer¬ 
tainly contained in the statement that “science 
demands a miracle,” because all that was ever 
evolved from the unit or units was most certainly 
intended by him who wrought the miracle. “Out 
of nothing, nothing comes.” 

Some of Dr. Darwin’s admirers have not 


THE ORIGIN OF A CHRISTIAN IDEA. 


45 


known either God or miracle, but have been so 
much concerned about the matter as to put forth 
their energies to find the beginning of the series 
of evolution in spontaneous generation of life and 
species from dead atoms. And having utterly 
failed they have concluded to live in the un¬ 
known and to be content with matter as the only 
substance ; they have cut the universe in twain 
by denying the existence of incorporeal nature 
and chained their boat to the shores of the gulf of 
universal death, and given up the idea of ever 
getting across. Their boat, however, is loaded 
with broken-down axioms and laws, which 
their common sense recognizes as veritable 
truths. J. Hutchison Sterling marched up to 
the boat and said : We are in the presence of 
the one incommunicable gulf, the gulf of gulfs, 
which Mr. Huxley’s protoplasm is as powerless 
to efface as any expedient that has ever been sug¬ 
gested since the eyes of men first looked into 
it, the mighty gulf between life and death. 
Then Mr. Huxley having tormented them by say¬ 
ing, all really scientific experience tells us that 
life can be produced by a living antecedent only, 
proceeds to administer a little consolation to 
the disappointed by saying the present state of 
knowledge furnishes us with no link between the 
living and the not living. And they respond : 
We will live in the unknown if we are lost in the 
gulf; so they have staked themselves off from 


46 


THE ORIGIN OF A CHRISTIAN IDEA. 


God and a future life, while the gulf is being 
crossed by thousands in the light of the axioms 
of science, religious belief and demonstrative 
reasoning. The law that life only produces life 
is the real centripetal cord binding us forever to 
the great fountain of life, which is the source of 
all life and intelligence. If I know that axioms 
are true I know there is an eternal living intelli¬ 
gence. With me His existence is a question of 
knowledge carried into consciousness by legiti¬ 
mate conclusions drawn from axioms, while His 
character in a moral sense and His will concern¬ 
ing us are questions of faith learned from His 
own revelation to mankind. 

Voltaire crossed the gulf in these words : “The 
God of the Jews, I again repeat, is the God of all 
nature .”—Philosophic Dictionary , p. 34. The Di¬ 
vine Being has placed His seal upon the organic 
kingdoms so effectually that the very best minds 
can never successfully transfer them to blind, 
physical forces, nor to chance. 

There is no such thing as force without energy, 
because it is the manifestation of energy, and this 
requires will behind it; as there is no seeing 
without the sense of sight, so there is no energy 
without mind. How long would it take a pile of 
type, by their own inertia, to place themselves in 
such a position as to be at once a fine lecture? 
Atheists and all others who deny design in na¬ 
ture advocate that for dead atoms which is far 


THE ORIGIN OF A CHRISTIAN IDEA. 


47 


more ridiculous than the idea of a fine unde¬ 
signed lecture. 

There are two items in the physical-force theory 
of creation. First, that creation is only new 
modifications of matter. But modifications must 
stand upon a modifier ; second, that matter is the 
only substance, and therefore whatever is made 
is made of matter by its own forces. But the 
forces of matter must stand upon matter, and 
therefore could never create matter. Axiom, no 
matter, no forces of matter. No physical nature, 
no physical forces. Physical forces stand upon 
physical nature. So the advocates of the physi¬ 
cal-force philosophy of creation have their cart 
always before their horse. What would you think 
of a man claiming that he begat his own father? 
This is exactly like the physical force theory of 
creation. No physical nature, no laws of physi¬ 
cal nature. The laws of nature never existed 
until nature first existed. The forces of nature 
never existed until nature first existed. So the 
laws of nature and the forces of* nature never cre¬ 
ated nature. 

Life and mind must be first in nature’s order. 
No vital nature, no vital forces. No mental na¬ 
ture, no mental forces. Dispense with the idea 
of creation by an incorporeal, ever-living intelli¬ 
gence and you are logically driven by the force of 
axioms to the idea of a chance world, or to a 
denial altogether of any creation at all. 


48 


THE ORIGIN OF A CHRISTIAN IDEA. 


No man, among all those who have opposed 
the Bible account of creation, has ever yet given 
an adequate cause of creation that was in har¬ 
mony with well-known axioms, nor such a cause 
for the existence of any created thing. Instinct, 
mind and free-will are not properties, nor quali¬ 
ties of matter. Dead matter never begat them, 
neither were they ever involved in dead matter ; 
therefore were never evolved out of, or from, dead 
matter, for this would be getting more out of the 
thing than there was in it, which would be equal 
to creating something of nothing. 

Mr. Darwin says : “Man is developed from an 
ovule about the one hundred and twenty-fifth of 
an inch in diameter, which differs in no respect 
from the ovules of other animals. The embryo 
itself, at a very early period, can hardly be dis¬ 
tinguished from that of other members of the 
vertebrate kingdom.” What is it that differen¬ 
tiates species, causing each to fall into line with 
its own paternity and also determines the sex 
with reference to' future offspring? The answer 
is found in the fact that there is in each an in¬ 
visible, incorporeal spiritual nature, from which 
the embryo itself proceeds, which, in the case of 
man, is endowed with reason and understanding, 
and all that elevates man above the nature of 
mere beasts made for man’s use. The invisible 
universe is the source of the visible, from which 
all organic nature in both vegetable and animal 


THE ORIGIN OF A CHRISTIAN IDEA. 


49 


life ever did, does and will proceed. This is the 
mystery in which we dwell, and of which Mr. 
Tyndall spake, saying, with reference to the ma¬ 
terialistic idea of the origin of all things : “I, 

myself, like other men, have my brighter hours, 
and it is not in these that I am inclined to this 
philosophy; in them my soul shrinks from it as 
a philosophy that furnishes no solution of the 
mysterious problem of human existence, in which 
we dwell and of which we form a part.” 

In all the world of mind the prototype of every 
created thing is first in the mind. So mind is 
the source of things, the ultimate of the exist¬ 
ence of things. Everything is known by the 
vigor and activity of that which knows, and its 
action is not involuntary, for it is not under the 
reign of physical laws ; its action depends upon a 
free will, which the physical laws liave never 
accounted for. This free will presides over the 
voluntary nerves which are connected with the 
upper brain, or cerebrum, while the involuntary 
are connected with the lower, or cerebellum, and 
with the heart, lungs, liver, stomach and kidneys. 
Physical laws reign here, but free will reigns in 
the kingdom of the voluntary nerves. That 
which is voluntary is done by design, purposed, 
intended, done freely, or of choice. The man 
who designs, purposes or intentionally kills 
another is a murderer, while the man who, with- 
4 


50 


THE ORIGIN OF A CHRISTIAN IDEA. 


out any such intention or purpose, lops a tree 
and in its descent it kills a man is not a mur¬ 
derer. 

We now have before us the grounds of all ac¬ 
countability. It is free will with design, intention 
or purpose, one or all; these condemn, while 
necessity, or the opposite, excuses. Upon these 
principles men are condemned or acquitted in all 
our courts. 

Sending men, in your thoughts, to heaven or 
hell by irresistible influences, is to utterly disre¬ 
gard, in thought, the justice of God, for in this 
case neither the one nor the other would be en¬ 
titled to rewards. You might, with equal pro¬ 
priety, tell me that some will get to heaven be¬ 
cause their blood circulates, and that others 
would be punished because their liver secretes 
bile. 


FREEDOM, THE BASIS OF EQUAL RIGHTS, 
AND RELIGIOUS BELIEF. 


Moral freedom is exactly the opposite of neces¬ 
sity ; it is freedom to do or let it alone, to do or 
not do. Man is not a necessitated being in a 
moral and religious sense. I know that it is 
claimed that the strongest motive necessitates. 
This is the same as to say, man is a creature of 
circumstances only, but this is untrue. The 
strongest motive does not necessitate action, be¬ 
cause action may be deferred for a time, and 
often is until it is too late, that is for all time. 
The motive itself depends upon the mind’s prefer¬ 
ence for its being the strongest motive; con¬ 
clusion, the mind governs. Choice is the result 
of mental action; men investigate and then 
choose. But they do not investigate without 
choosing to do so. Men rise above and sink be¬ 
low their circumstances, are continually chang¬ 
ing their circumstances, are free to do so or let it 
alone. The opposite of this places all men upon 
the same irresponsible plane as respects all society 
and all governments, destroying the distinction 
between sober intellectual reason and emotional 
insanity, because men necessitated by the strong¬ 
est motives are driven by the emotions produced* 


52 FREEDOM, THE BASIS OF EQUAL RIGHTS. 

and no more can be said of the criminal in law 
who is acquitted upon the ground of emotional 
insanity. All men do not act alike under the same 
circumstances. The same man does not always 
act alike under the same circumstances. A man 
will at one time accept a motive and act, and at 
another he will reject the same motive and not 
act. 

We are familiar with that old saying “You 
can’t do it again,” and this proves that the con¬ 
trolling power is mind, and not motive, and that 
the mind is free to accept a motive and act, or to 
reject a motive and not act. A man may accept a 
motive and procrastinate action indefinitely, and 
this also proves that in action the mind governs. 
All other freedom is slavery, is necessity, and 
this is destructive of the foundations of all jus¬ 
tice in all civil governments ; it is fatalism ; it 
discloses a man as a machine to be acted upon. 
It assumes that man being necessitated in both 
mental and moral action is not to be held ac¬ 
countable ; is not to be blamed, and therefore 
there is no such contrast as that between vice and 
virtue ; no such thing as sin. In this system vice 
ceases to be vice and virtue ceases to be virtue. 

How much do the laws of this system differ 
from the laws that govern the stone? Is there 
any moral nature where all is necessity? Do we 
ever speak of moral nature in connection with 
the waters that flow in their channels? Can a 


FREEDOM, THE BASIS OF EQUAL RIGHTS. 53 

rational man attribute praise or blame, vice or 
virtue to the stone? If he can not, can he at¬ 
tribute either to a man who is necessitated in his 
conduct and character, ground out of the mills by 
uncontrollable circumstances? All our boasted 
morality, viewed in the light of the evolutionary 
mill of necessity, reminds us of the doctor who 
cured the fever by killing his patient. 

If a man did not create himself he may be re¬ 
sponsible. Can a man be responsible without 
moral freedom? Can the mind through the ac¬ 
tivities of its own nature be the cause of a volition 
or choice ? The mind itself may be the cause of 
effects in itself, as well as out of itself. If it can 
not, then we have effects without a cause, which 
is an absurdity. Bacon said : “He who reasons 
must have something to reason from, and some¬ 
thing to reason to. We choose to reason, and 
reasoning in the mind also lies behind that ac¬ 
tion of the mind which we call choice or will.” 
If you ask me why the mind is active in the way 
it is, I answer, it is because it is an intelligent 
creative first cause, able to determine what course 
will suit it best. And by virtue of its intelli¬ 
gence, and its consequent ability to judge of the 
future, it is a creative first cause, acting freely 
without compulsion or necessity. 

The hypothesis of necessity is the unbeliever’s 
short method of murdering religion. But here 
they lay off their manhood just as the doctor laid 


54 FREEDOM, THE BASIS OF EQUAL RIGHTS. 

away his patient to cure the fever. It is true that 
infants come into the world under diverse circum¬ 
stances, but they do not long remain infants, and 
even here the theory fails, for those who come 
under the most unfavorable circumstances often 
make the best of citizens. And those most fortu¬ 
nate in their earliest surroundings often make the 
worst; men do not remain under the circum¬ 
stances of their childhood days. A. Campbell 
said : ‘ ‘All men who have not philosophized them¬ 
selves beyond the region of common-sense, allow 
that sober reason is stronger than moral or im¬ 
moral attraction, and therefore allow that all 
persons who reason are surrounded with respon¬ 
sibilities for their action. We do not think of 
blaming infants until their minds are somewhat 
developed.” 

Make the chain of evolution as strong as you 
will; bind man down to nature by every muscle, 
and every nerve and bioplastic cell of his body, 
if you can, and then the greater part of him 
remains unaccounted for. His free will, which 
is his prime factor and characteristic and moral 
nature, takes him out of the category of the mate¬ 
rial world, and exempts him from its destiny. 
In fact, will is reigning king over the volun¬ 
tary nerves. Mr. Darwin says : “Free will is a 
mystery insoluble to the naturalist. Evolution 
can not account for consciousness of identity, 


FREEDOM, THE BASIS OF EQUAL RIGHTS. 55 


nor for abstract conceptions, nor for moral obliga¬ 
tions nor for free will.” 

Tyndall says : “The chasm between brain ac¬ 
tion and consciousness is impassable ; here lies 
a rock upon which the materialistic philosophy 
must split when it pretends to be a philosophy of 
the human mind. There are two parts of man’s 
nature : molecular processes, with involuntary 
perpetual action, on one side, and conscious 
identity, moral sense and free will on the other. 
So we need not trouble ourselves with anything 
physical evolution may assert of us, because it 
can not touch us as conscious moral beings. 
With our freedom of will we are above the reign 
of physical laws, and of physical evolution. 
These two sides of our being, with the chasm ly¬ 
ing between them, are recognized by all respecta¬ 
ble scientists. They wonderfully contrast with 
each other. We have the voluntary and invol¬ 
untary nerves, one set for the free will, the other 
for physical laws. Materialism will not bridge 
this gulf. There is a world for my physical na¬ 
ture, for one side of my being. Is there one for 
the other? Do I need another? Do I not find 
myself at liberty to believe in that which I need? 
To believe in an unseen world for my unseen na¬ 
ture ; for the hidden man of the heart, “the 
meek and quiet spirit, which, in the sight of 
God, is of great price.” 

Secularists, before they got into their non- 


56 FREEDOM, THE BASIS OF EQUAL RIGHTS. 

theological edition, and Christians both believed 
in the rights of man from a theological stand¬ 
point. The doctrine of equal rights rested, where 
it does yet with Christians, upon the belief that 
men had what is commonly called souls. As 
tried at the tribunal of knowledge and calm in¬ 
tellect the social doctrine rests upon the religious. 
Robespierre rested his declaration of rights on 
this foundation. It was just here that the whole 
case of slavery found its death. “Colored men 
have souls to save as well as white men.” Both 
have the same God to serve, before whom, in 
their soul nature, they are equal. Such belief 
made the suppression of slavery possible. With¬ 
out this belief Wilberforce would have been with¬ 
out power, and Uncle Tom’s cabin without 
pathos. Theism and the rights of man, hereto¬ 
fore, were convertible terms. But secularists, 
who proclaim with zeal that theism and religion 
are delusions, forget that in their secularism the 
rights of man may turn out to be a delusion, and 
that instead of being recognized more fully in 
the future there may be none left to recognize. 

One of this school, in America, said: “Entire 
equality of rights implies entire equality in na¬ 
ture, and as the latter does not exist, the former 
will never exist in the law of natural morality. ’ ’ 
How will this do in practice ? Where is their ba¬ 
sis for equal rights? They have none. Natural 
morality is limited to what men know of right 


FREEDOM, THE BASIS OF EQUAL RIGHTS. 57 

and wrong naturally. It never built a civiliza¬ 
tion. It lias mercy for near relatives and friends, 
but for enemies it has none. It is pagan 
ground, being exclusively natural. Repudiating 
soul-nature they can’t find a basis for equal 
rights to stand upon. They deny that men are 
equal. They are forced to this conclusion by 
their views of the origin and character of the hu¬ 
man family. 

This is not all; they insist that men are une¬ 
qual, and they do it with a fullness of meaning 
which was inconceivable until they got into their 
non-theological edition. No slave autocrat ever 
implied this doctrine of inequality so fully as 
secularists do in their materialistic philosophy. 
All its tendencies are to show, if possible, with 
increasing clearness, that each man is the creat¬ 
ure of his circumstances, that of his human 
value his body is the index, and that men’s ine¬ 
qualities are not only real, but greater than they 
appear to be. They have no souls to place them 
on common ground of equality. If a man was 
in the least degree other than he has been, to the 
eyes of secularists he would have been another 
man. With them what each man is is all he 
could have been. So to talk about equality be¬ 
tween men and men is as absurd as to talk of 
equality between dogs as dogs and horses as 
horses. And possibly more absurd, because men 
as men, when viewed from their standpoint as 


58 FREEDOM, THE BASIS OF EQUAL RIGHTS. 

evolved from lower animals, differ as much, if 
not more. There are savages who, placed simply 
in the scale of animals, are pearer the highest 
order of animals than they are to the highest or¬ 
der of their own species. And if creatures so 
far removed from each other as some men are 
from others, in a physical point of view, can be 
regarded as equals when considered out of rela¬ 
tions to God and the future, through soul-nature 
within them, then we may say dogs are equal to 
dogs and cats are equal to horses. 

Rights must be sanctioned or they amount to 
nothing; must be sanctioned by an authority 
that can see that they will be granted. Of whom 
do we claim them? Here we are again left to re¬ 
ligious belief. God will execute so that every 
man will receive according to his deeds, and all 
wrongs will be avenged. The opposite of all this 
is the old idea that human might makes right. 
Conscience is an imperious voice within us, 
equally so in all of us. This is admitted on all 
sides. How is this to be accounted for? Secular¬ 
ists claim that conscience is an inherited instinct, 
developed slowly from the pains and pleasures of 
our far-away ascidian forefathers ; that it has been 
thousands and thousands of years evolving itself. 
For argument’s sake let us admit this to be true, 
and what secularists insist upon will by no means 
stop here. They declare that though conscience 
be thus placed in thought, it will yet in practice 


FREEDOM, THE BASIS OF EQUAL RIGHTS. 59 

suffer no change in its powers, because men’s en¬ 
vironments through the ages have made them 
what they are. This second statement is involved 
in the first, so conscience, gaining its power all 
along the line of its evolutionary progress, is as 
much a necessary part of a necessitated being as 
any member of the physical organism. Can we 
therefore get rid of it? Can we be asked to mod¬ 
ify it? Can we do it? 

It is also involved in secularism that, although 
conscience had its origin in social instincts, these 
instincts have gained their present power by be¬ 
ing taken for something more than social in¬ 
stincts ; that they have, as a matter of history, 
been obliged to translate themselves into an ar¬ 
ticulate formula of religious belief, and in fact 
into all religious beliefs. So all religions are the 
creatures of evolution, and the result of natural 
selection, and therefore just as natural as natural 
morality necessitated! Secularists claim that 
conscience was not only evolved from the unre¬ 
solving impulses of natural instinct, but that it 
fulfills a double function, or office, at once mak¬ 
ing laws and enforcing them. But in explaining 
how it has come to do the first, they have robbed 
it of its freedom to do the second. So all they 
can justly do in any practical direction is to show 
us that they desire that each and every man 
should follow his own conscience. As yet they 
have produced no reasons why this should not be 


60 FREEDOM, THE BASIS OF EQUAL RIGHTS. 

the rule of action, but at present they must seek 
for reasons in some other school than their own. 

And this brings us to a matter of great im¬ 
portance to our country ; and that is, whether the 
foundations of human rights, and the civil and 
religious liberties of the millions, shall be ignored. 
In secularism this has already been done, at the 
expense of contradicting their own theory con¬ 
cerning the evolution of conscience, and equally 
against religious beliefs as the result of natural 
selection. But, perhaps, it will take as long to 
devolve our conscience and religion as it did to 
evolve them. If every man is just what ances¬ 
tral influences made him through the ages past, 
operating upon him, he can be no more, nor 
less, than what he is, and why try to make him 
more or less in a day, or by law? 

Take away human freedom by this Moloch of 
necessity and then talk of freedom ! Talk of lib¬ 
erty ! Such is the climax of absurdities. It is 
an insult to the common sense of mankind. Ac¬ 
cording to this evolutionary necessity we want to 
know where freedom comes in and what it is. 
So no one need expect that the religious con¬ 
sciousness will die away, or will change the lines 
of its evolution. Its specialties of forms once 
strongly marked may, if not tenable, gradually 
fade away, but the religious consciousness, the 
object-matter, will persist or continue. That the 
object-matter can be supplanted by another ob- 


FREEDOM, THE BASIS OF EQUAL RIGHTS. 61 

ject-matter, as supposed by secularists, who talk 
about a religion without God, a religion without 
a future life, is a belief countenanced neither by 
induction nor by deduction. 

Herbert Spencer has said: ‘‘However domi¬ 
nant may be the moral sentiment enlisted on be¬ 
half of humanity, it can never exclude the sen¬ 
timent alone properly religious, because it is 
awakened by that which lies behind humanity, 
and behind all other things. The child, by wrap¬ 
ping its head in the ‘ bed-e-lohes,’ may for a mo¬ 
ment get rid of the light, but the consciousness 
survives, and imagination persists in occupying 
itself with that which lies in the unseen. No 
such religion as a religion of humanity, pertain¬ 
ing wholly to the human, can ever do more than 
temporarily shut out the thought of a power, of 
which humanity is but a small and fugitive prod¬ 
uct, which was in course of ever-changing mani¬ 
festation before humanity was, and will continue 
through other manifestations when humanity has 
ceased to be .”—Popular Science Monthly, July , 
1873. 

In the above quotation it is claimed that the 
object-matter of religion is involved once for al 
in consciousness, and in evolution, and if in, how 
are secularists going to get it out? They may 
wrap their heads in the bed-e-lohes, and shut out 
the great companion momentarily, but conscious¬ 
ness will still persist, and they will always be as 


62 FREEDOM, THE BASIS OF EQUAL RIGHTS. 

they are, troubling themselves about the unknown. 
After awhile they may give Him another name. 
May it not be the ‘‘known and knowable.” This 
would be a grand rebuke to those who say in their 
hearts “there is no God.” If you shut the Great 
One out temporarily He will still exist in your 
imagination. Can you succeed in wiping out of 
consciousness the elements of revealed religion? 
God and a future life? Spencer says, “No!” and 
we say, No! 

Voltaire says : “My reason alone proves to me 
a being who has arranged the matter of this 
world.” The man who finds no better name for 
the great Father of Spirits, and creator of all 
things, than the name, “the unknown,” is steeped 
all over, eyes and ears, in mysticism. While I 
am in this world I want to know a great deal 
more than I can comprehend. The more I know 
of the incomprehensible the more I shall profit 
in both science and religion, because the funda¬ 
mental truths and facts of both are the founda¬ 
tion elements of both. I do not comprehend my 
own mental capacities and powers, nor that thing 
called life, yet I know them as veritable realities. 
When Daniel Webster was in the prime of his 
manhood he was in the company of a number of 
literary gentlemen, lawyers, physicians, mer¬ 
chants and statesmen, sitting at a table dining. 
During their conversation Webster stated his 
belief in the divinity of the Christ, and his 


FREEDOM, THE BASIS OF EQUAL RIGHTS. 63 

dependence upon Him. A noted gentleman sit¬ 
ting opposite to him said : “Mr. Webster, can 
you comprehend how Jesus Christ could be both 
divine and human?” Mr. Webster, with one of 
those looks, which no man can imitate, said : 
“No sir, I can not comprehend it; and I would 
be ashamed to acknowledge Him as my Savior 
if I could. If I could comprehend Him, He could 
be no greater than myself, and such is my con¬ 
viction of accountability to God, and sense of 
sinfulness before him, and knowledge of my own 
incapacity to recover myself, that I feel I need a 
super-human Savior.” 

Renan said : “In the first rank of this grand 
family of the true sons of God we must place 
Jesus. Jesus has no visions. God does not 
speak to Him from without. God is in Him. He 
feels that He is with God, and He draws from His 
heart what He says of His Father. He lives in 
the bosom of God by uninterrupted communica¬ 
tion. He does not see Him, but He understands 
Him without need of thunder and burning-bush 
like Moses, of a revealing tempest like Job, of an 
oracle like the old Greek sages, of a familiar 
genius like Socrates, or of an angel Gabriel like 
Mohammed. 

‘ ‘The sentiment which Jesus introduced into the 
world is really ours. His perfect idealism is the 
highest rule of unworldly virtuous life. He has 
created that heaven of free-souls in which is 


64 FREEDOM, THE BASIS OF EQUAL RIGHTS. 

found that for which we ask in vain, the perfect 
nobility of the children of God, absolute purity, 
total abstraction from the contaminating influ¬ 
ences of the world ; that freedom, in short, which 
material society shuts out as an impossibility, 
and which finds all its amplitude only in the do¬ 
main of thought. The great master of those who 
take refuge in this ideal kingdom of God is Jesus 
still. He first proclaimed the Kingliness of the 
Spirit. He first said, at least by his acts : ‘My 
kingdom is not of this world.’ The foundation 
of the true religion is indeed His work. After 
Him, there is nothing more but to develop and 
fructify.”— Renan's Life of Jesus , p. 365. 


ARTIFICIAL OR NATURAL JUSTICE, 
WHICH? 


Secularists who make so much ado about “lib¬ 
erty of man, woman and child,” allow that 
nature brought us into the world without any 
fetters or shackles, free from all obligations, jus¬ 
tice and morality, they being only hindrances to 
true liberty. Their philosophy is that nature 
absolutely disassociates men and women, by giv¬ 
ing them diverse and contrary appetites, or de¬ 
sires, and consequently that every person is at 
war with every other person in a natural state, 
and that the gratification of our appetites and 
desires is the only measure of good in nature, 
and, therefore, there is not and can not be any¬ 
thing naturally just or unjust, nothing in itself 
naturally unlawful, or sinful, but that a man by 
nature has a right to everything, even other 
men’s labor and lives. If he desires a man’s 
life he has naturally liberty to kill, and may do 
so without committing any injustice or sin, be¬ 
cause his right is that of unlimited liberty. 

It is further claimed, that though this, their 
natural state of liberty from all justice, there be¬ 
ing no such thing in nature, and liberty from all 
obligations, and a lawless, loose, unlimited right 
5 


66 


ARTIFICIAL OR NATURAL JUSTICE. 


to everything—being the best, yet, by reason of 
men’s want of strength, feebleness of body and 
mind, and diversity of appetites, it proves to be 
the worst; because by nature, they say, every 
man is at war with every other man, and this, 
practically, makes man’s liberty to everything a 
liberty to nothing. According to these tenets 
men must be sensible in a natural state of more 
evil than good, and in order to experience more 
good than evil their natural liberty must be cir¬ 
cumscribed, or we must have anarchy and uni¬ 
versal conflict. This being the state of the case, 
it is claimed, that after men were a long while 
slashing and warring against each other, getting 
weary and tired, they thought it best, and neces¬ 
sary, by human skill, to help their own weakness 
by choosing a lesser evil, so they consented to 
modify their unlimited right to everything by 
submitting to terms of equal rights for the sake 
of peace and security, and, therefore, put them¬ 
selves under a civil, common, coercive power, 
whose will, being the will of all, should be the 
rule and measure of justice. This is the lan¬ 
guage of secularism upon the origin of justice. 
So, true justice is not a nature, but an accident, 
based upon fear, the fear of the stronger. Plato 
describes it in these words : 

“They say, therefore, that by nature, lawless 
liberty and to do that which is now called in¬ 
justice and injury to other men is good, but to 


ARTIFICIAL OR NATURAL JUSTICE. 


67 


suffer it from others is evil; but of the two there 
is more of evil in suffering it than of good in do¬ 
ing it, because men of might and power were 
always in the minority; and when men had 
clashed a good while, doing and suffering injury, 
the greater part, who by reason of their weak¬ 
ness of body and mind were not able to take the 
former without the latter, at length compromised 
the business among themselves, entering into 
covenants with each other to neither do nor suf¬ 
fer injury, but to submit to rules of equality, and 
to make laws by compact, in order to their 
peaceable cohabitation, they calling that which 
was required by the name of justice, regarding 
justice as a certain middle thing between the best 
and the worst; the best to exercise a lawless 
liberty of doing as one pleases without suffering 
from it, and the worst to suffer evil from others 
without being able to avenge themselves. So 
justice is loved, not as that which is good in it¬ 
self, but as that which is made good by men’s 
inability to exercise themselves in the enjoyment 
of unbridled liberty and liberalism.” 

With secularists justice and obligation are both 
artificial, mere accidents arising from men’s fear 
and imbecility. These advocates of liberty from 
the fear of God, and the fear of future rewards, 
are compelled by their own philosophy to found 
their politics and morals in the fear that the 
stronger will, in the exercise of their natural lib- 


68 


ARTIFICIAL OR NATURAL JUSTICE. 


erty, inflict evil upon the weaker, changing the 
object of fear from the stronger man to the civil 
magistrate, being forced to enter into covenants 
creating governments and artificial justice. And 
now they try to recommend themselves to the 
civil authorities, by trying to persuade them that 
the fear of any superior power is degrading and 
destructive of civil authority. Their system, if 
it may be so called, first of all villainizes human¬ 
ity. Its foundation is the thought that human 
nature has not the least germ of goodness or of 
equity in it. With them everything in human 
character is the result of fear, weakness and pov¬ 
erty, all private and selfish appetite, sensual 
pleasure and utility. 

There is nothing in such teachings to save any 
government from being oppressive through wealth 
and power ; these are their only evolutions. Ig¬ 
noring the spiritual in man, the best with them 
is a lawless liberty, one and identical with an¬ 
archy. All that saves them from being practi¬ 
cally anarchists now is, according to their own 
statements, the fear of suffering at the hands of 
the stronger. But, in justice to them, I must 
say that they claim to have alienated their natu¬ 
ral right, or at least a part of it, to others whom 
they fear, so that it will become unlawful for 
them to carry out the principles of anarchy. 

A civil government does not create natural 
rights. By legislation it may create privileges, 


ARTIFICIAL OR NATURAL JUSTICE. 


69 


but rights it does not. It may assume a power 
that does not belong to it, but this would be op¬ 
pression. It is the proper business of legislative 
bodies to make laws to protect men in the enjoy¬ 
ment of their natural rights. A civil govern¬ 
ment has no more right to enact a wrong than 
an individual. A civil government can make 
itself very uncivil by enacting laws in conflict 
with natural rights. “Framing mischief by a 
law” always was a very blameworthy thing. But 
some secularists have said, men are naturally 
bound by their covenants, obliged to stand by 
them. And so they enter into compacts by cove¬ 
nants, and do this through fear of the stronger. 
Thus they get from the artificial to the natural, 
and by the natural obligate men to the artificial. 

All this dancing around in a circle to prove that 
there is no such thing as natural justice reminds 
me of a man trying to tie knots in a whirlwind. 
It is certainly a climax in the absurd. The liga¬ 
ments with which those men tie the bones to¬ 
gether in their artificial man of justice—natural 
rights—unlimited liberty and covenanted obliga¬ 
tions, are no more than cobwebs. They, being no 
more than man’s will, through fear, may be un¬ 
made by the same authority when it is confident 
of success in the undertaking. Their artificial 
justice, sovereignty and obligations, holding them 
together, and uniting in one body politic those 
who are naturally divided, and each and every 


70 


ARTIFICIAL OR NATURAL JUSTICE. 


one haying a natural right to all things and to 
unlimited liberty, will always be productive of 
rebellions and anarchy. 

These men are driven from art to force and 
power, and make even their magistrates to rule in 
fear. See Hobbes 1 Leviathan , ch. 16. But in case 
the only obligation to be loyal to one’s country 
be from the dread or fear of punishment by the 
stronger, then no man or set of men could be 
obliged to lay themselves upon their country’s 
altar for the preservation of its existence, but 
might violate its laws and repudiate their mem¬ 
bership in the civil compact whenever they might 
think it to their advantage to do so, for whatever 
is made by human might may be unmade by 
human might or force ; for in this philosophy 
civil government, about which so much has been 
written, is nothing more than human in its origin, 
and all civil rights are based wholly upon human 
might. 

Christians who believe that civil magistrates 
and civil powers were ordained of God never 
advocate things fraught with such absurd con¬ 
sequences, but those who do are one-world 
men. There is so much of the good and sensible 
in human nature that it has been said men 
everywhere continually drop into political order ; 
that the corruption of one form of government is 
the generation of another. And if so, civil gov¬ 
ernment is neither artificial nor violent, but nat- 


ARTIFICIAL OR NATURAL JUSTICE. 


71 


ural. There is necessarily a natural bond, which 
holds people together, which has the Divine seal 
upon it, and that is the social nature of man. 
Man is naturally a social being, made for society, 
both domestic and civil. In civil government 
the natural bond is natural justice, which is the 
chief concern in all our courts of justice. To 
this all unabused consciences consent; therefore, 
the golden rule, “As ye would that men should 
do unto you, do ye even so unto them,” is per¬ 
fectly natural. It is also in harmony with the 
doctrine of equal rights based upon equality of 
soul nature. 

If there was nothing in its own nature just nor 
unjust there could be no obligation at all. There 
is nothing which has the sanction of conscience 
sooner than simple justice. If civil governments 
wish to destroy themselves they have only to 
utterly disregard natural justice and conscience. 
Natural justice is the vertebra of the civil body. 
When it is reached every controversy should end. 
Impartial justice and the good of the whole ever 
did and ever will clash with the claims of unlim¬ 
ited liberty, and a right to everything in one’s 
power. Lawless liberty is fraught with all man¬ 
ner of evil consequences, both to those who strive 
to enjoy it and to others. Men in our country 
trying it have gone to both the penitentiary and 
the gallows, and others have plunged themselves 
into seas of blood. 


ALL MEN LIVE BY FAITH. 


Science furnishes j)hilosophy with facts to work 
upon. The two are inseparably connected. Phi¬ 
losophy terminates its work by reaching the first 
cause of all things, which is the underlying truth 
in the Christian religion. Science ends in the 
beginning of philosophy, and philosophy ends in 
the beginning of Bible history. The ultimate of 
inductive philosophy is in these words : In the 
beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 
Science, philosophy and religion are a trinity in 
unity. Faith is an essential element in each of 
these. 

Are you a student in astronomy? Have you 
measured the radius of the earth? or observed 
the movement of the planets? or calculated the 
distance of the sun from other planets? or the 
distance from the center of the earth’s orbit to the 
center of the sun? Would we consider ourselves 
able to fix the instruments for such a calculation ? 
We were never within a hundred miles of the 
necessary position for such observations. They 
were made in Lapland in 1769, and also in Tahiti. 
We have accepted these astronomical measure¬ 
ments upon the testimony of men. 

Are you a student in geology? Have you read 


ALL MEN LIVE BY FAITH. 


73 


the Stone book.extensively? Have you examined 
the fossils of the different localities, which are so 
many pointers to the science? Have you seen 
them in their proper places? No, you depend 
upon the testimony of men who have made a 
specialty of the study, and the veracity of authors, 
assisting you by maps of ideal formations pictured 
off in indigo-blue, brimstone yellow and pink. 
Are you students in chemistry, proud of the cer¬ 
tainty of demonstration? How much of the 
science is experimental with you? Have you 
analyzed nine hundred and forty-two substances, 
or the twentieth part of them? No, you receive 
your knowledge upon the testimony of others. 
You could not live long enough to verify one-half 
of the discoveries in the sciences? We live in the 
sciences by faith, as we do in religion. All the 
cant we hear about the uncertainty of religion 
and the certainty of science is misleading and 
largely absurd. Scientists take as much by faith 
as Christians. They wrap themselves up in as 
much second-hand assurance as Christians, and 
have been as badly confused by rival opinions. 
The sciences commenced with more ignorance 
than our religion ; they were patched up year by 
year and century after century by new discov¬ 
eries, now received by faith in the testimony of 
others. 

Science is knowledge systematized, based upon 
first truths ; but if there is no design in nature, 


74 


ALL MEN LIVE BY FAITH. 


no order, no plan, then there can be no system 
or science. We do not comprehend confusion in 
nature. We are so constituted that we expect 
order; we are always searching after it. Belief 
in cause and effect is a first belief, a primitive 
belief, because it always was and always will be 
common to all rational minds. Without this faith 
natural law would never have been known. The 
natural sciences are based upon natural laws, and 
natural laws are known in uniform effects, which 
are called natural laws. Cause and effect un¬ 
derlie all natural sciences ; they are the first prin¬ 
ciples of the sciences. Our knowledge in the 
sciences rests upon faith and our faith upon the 
knowledge of evidence. We sow seeds without 
certainty of a good crop, but we sow in faith 
based upon uniform results. Deprive us of faith 
and we fall back upon pagan ground. We could 
have no civilization without faith. In religion 
it is written : “The just shall live by faith.” 

The common faith of the world is based upon 
the evidences of the seen, and the faith of the 
just is based upon the evidences of the unseen. 
Young Pollock told the truth when he said, “All 
faith is one in kind, in object the difference lies.” 
We have great need of faith. On what principle 
do we receive bank bills in payment for prop¬ 
erty? It is faith. On what principles do unbe¬ 
lievers put religion beyond the sphere of faith? 
It would bother them to tell how man, connected 


ALL MEN LIVE BY FAITH. 


75 


by his five senses with this world alone, came in 
possession of those ideas which belong to another 
world. 

Faith is the bond of companionship, and com¬ 
panionship is the true philosophy of happiness. 
If I were alone upon the earth and gold mines 
were all around me, the discovery of one fresh 
human foot-print in the sand would fill me with 
more anticipated joy than an everlasting, scien¬ 
tific solitude with gold on every hand. 

One of the favorite arguments of unbelievers 
in Christianity is, that geology makes our earth 
much older than the Bible does, which is a great 
mistake ; for if the geologist could prove to a cer¬ 
tainty that the earth was a million of years older 
than Adam it would conflict with no statement 
in the Bible. How do they set to work to prove 
that the earth is of any given age? They say the 
many layers of rock evidently formed under 
water, some of which are formed of fragments of 
older rocks, containing shells, bones and bird 
tracks made when the rocks were soft mud, goes 
to show great age. But this, and all such as 
this, utterly fails to give any certain age to our 
earth. 

One writer furnishes us with this duplicate 
problem : U A certain house was found to be built 
with ten courses of hewn stone in the basement, 
forty courses of brick in the first story, thirty-six 
courses in the second, and thirty in the third ; 


76 


ALL MEN LIVE BY FAITH. 


with a roof of nine-inch rafters covered with inch 
boards, and an inch-and-a-half layer of coal tar 
and gravel. How long was it in building? A 
student in mathematics who would not laugh at 
any man who would attempt to solve a problem 
like this, ought to say, I’ll never laugh again. 
He might ask : How can you tell unless you 
know where the materials came from, how they 
were conveyed, how many workmen were em¬ 
ployed, and how much each could do in a day? 
If the brick were made by hand, the lumber all 
dressed by hand with a hand saw and jack-plane, 
the materials hauled fifty miles in an ox wagon, 
the brick carried up by an Irishman in a hod, 
and the work done by a slow-going jobbing con¬ 
tractor, who could only afford to pay three or 
four men at a time, they would not get through 
in a year. But if the building stone and sand 
were found in excavating the cellar, the brick 
were made by steam, and came by railroad, a 
good master-builder, with steam saw and planing 
mills, steam hoists, and a strong force of work¬ 
men, would run it up in three weeks.” 

So our geologists ought to say, “We don’t 
know either the source of the materials of the 
earth’s strata nor the means by which they were 
conveyed to their present position, therefore we 
can’t tell the time required for its formation.” 
But instead of saying this they have imagined 
that blind physical forces worked with the most 


ALL MEN LIVE BY FAITH. 


77 


unsuitable materials and agencies, and with the 
most inadequate forces, and therefore it took mill¬ 
ions of years to bring it into existence. Some of 
their number, being disgusted with the problem, 
have assumed that 4 ‘the universe is infinite and 
eternal,” seeming to forget that the readings of 
fossil remains in the rocks prove that the earth 
has undergone many changes since organic life 
was introduced upon its surface. Denudations 
and new constructions characterize its history 
through ages of the past. The fundamental dog¬ 
ma of atheism is “that the earth is eternal, and 
therefore self-existent; that the universe is in¬ 
finite ; that it has no boundaries ; suns succeed¬ 
ing suns, and firmaments clustering beyond firm¬ 
aments throughout infinite space.” 

The utter absurdity of this statement is found 
in the fact that astronomical observation has 
demonstrated that there is room in empty space 
for nineteen million three hundred and ninety- 
five thousand one hundred and nine such uni¬ 
verses as ours. Ours bears no more proportion 
to infinite space than a fishing boat to the Atlan¬ 
tic ocean. If our universe were infinite the 
whole heaven would seem to be one vast milky 
way, exhibiting that whitish light which results 
from the mingling of the rays of stars and com¬ 
ets ; if these were infinitely numerous it would 
not be possible for an unilluminated spot to be 
seen in the whole expanse. It is said the tele- 


78 


ALL MEN LIVE BY FAITH. 


scope has augmented the visible universe one 
hundred and twenty-five million, and made men 
feel that our planet is but as a handful of dust 
upon the sea shore in comparison with the im¬ 
mensity of the creation. The telescope has also 
shown boundless regions of darkness and soli¬ 
tude stretching around and far away beyond ex¬ 
isting planets. 

The Bible gives us no theory of creation. It 
simply asserts that in the beginning God created 
the heavens and the earth ; but it does not give 
us the how. Such knowledge could be of no use 
to us, for He does not propose to employ us in 
the world-making business. Our knowledge of 
astronomy has been accumulative, handed down 
from generation to generation and received by 
faith. How many unbelievers in Christianity 
use telescopes, and chemical laboratories, and 
make geological explorations? Not one man in 
a thousand verifies the facts of the sciences. By 
faith one generation stands upon the shoulders of 
another, and thus we move onward and upward 
in knowledge, and unbelievers live by faith as 
well as we. 

It has been said, negatives have nothing to do 
but to deny or object, but this is a great mistake ; 
they are bound by all the laws of logic to prove 
their objections. A man is regarded, in logical 
discussion, as defeated when he refuses to sus¬ 
tain his objections. What is unbelief? It is the 


ALL MEN LIVE BY FAITH. 


79 


negation of the truth when it is used as the op¬ 
posite of the truth ; then it is like a vessel at sea 
without a bottom, inside the eddies all suck 
downward. All who oppose the religion of the 
Christ have certain affirmative positions, which 
they ought to maintain by evidence, or abandon 
them. Instead of doing this they have swung 
off into the regions of mere hypothesis, or guess¬ 
work. That which they do not comprehend they 
say they do not know. To be consistent they 
should deny their own existence, for they do not 
comprehend themselves, yet they do know them¬ 
selves. Their language is a confusion of speech. 
Webster defines the term ‘ ‘know” in its first mean¬ 
ing, to perceive with certainty, to understand 
clearly, to have a clear and certain perception of 
truth, fact, or anything that actually exists. To 
know a thing precludes all doubt or uncertainty 
of its existence. We know what we see with our 
eyes, or perceive with other senses. We know 
that fire and water are different substances. We 
know that truth and falsehood express ideas in¬ 
compatible with each other. We know that a 
circle is not a square. We do not know the truth 
of reports, nor can we always know what to be¬ 
lieve. Second meaning, to be informed of, to be 
taught. It is not unusual for us to say we know 
things from information, when we rely on the 
veracity of the informer. Third meaning, to dis- 


80 


ALL MEN LIVE BY FAITH. 


tinguish, as to know one man from another. We 
know a fixed star from a planet by its twinkling. 

Do we comprehend all that we see with our 
eyes? 

Do we comprehend all that we hear with our 
ears ? 

Do we comprehend all that we feel? 

Do we comprehend all that we smell? 

Do we comprehend all that we taste? 

These five questions touch our five senses, and 
yet we must answer every one in the negative. 
And yet Webster says: We know what our 
senses enable us to perceive. Where is the diffi¬ 
culty ? 

Answer—Know and comprehend are very dif¬ 
ferent words. 

Webster says: Incomprehensibility is that 
which is beyond the reach of the human intel¬ 
lect. We know much that is incomprehensible. 
But how can men intelligently talk about the un¬ 
known and unknowable? The unknown is one 
thing and the incomprehensible is quite another. 
A student must know a problem before he under¬ 
takes to solve it. Knowing it he undertakes its 
solution, but incomprehensible problems do not 
admit of solution. Such have been given to stu¬ 
dents to sharpen them up upon the subject of 
what is and what is not a mathematical problem. 
When a teacher gives such a problem he can say 
the solution is inconceivable, but the student 


ALL MEN LIVE BY FAITH. 


81 


struggles with it until he discovers the fact that 
it is not a mathematical problem and throws it 
to one side. Still he knows the problem, and 
twelve months afterwards gives it to another stu¬ 
dent to whet him up. 

The incomprehensible is conceivable, is know- 
able, and the unknowable is neither conceivable 
or knowable. The men who are so fond of talk¬ 
ing about the unknowable, say, “If we have a 
mind to find the principle of action in matter and 
the origin of things, it is forever to fall back into 
difficulties, and to absolutely abridge the exam¬ 
ination of our senses, which only can make us 
know and judge of the causes capable of acting 
upon them, or impressing on them motion.” 
Their own philosophy is that all our ideas are the 
result of causes capable of acting upon our senses, 
or impressing on them motion, and" all such 
causes, with them, are found in the objects of 
sense, and that the human mind can not originate 
a simple idea. If their philosophy be true, the 
origin of the Christian religion must of necessity 
belong to minds of another world. According to 
their philosophy it never could, with its simple 
ideas belonging to another world, have originated 
in the human mind. How can they account for 
the idea of an unseen inheritance in reservation 
in heaven, or for the idea of one supreme creator, 
who is the Father of all His children, or for the 
6 


82 


ALL MEN LIVE BY FAITH. 


idea of pardon, or the idea of everlasting life, 
when all the currents of nature are downward. 
According to their teaching, how did man ever 
come to entertain the knowledge of invisible 
things pertaining to an unseen world? things be¬ 
yond the grave and beyond the clouds. The idea 
of a mythical origin will not do, because a myth 
is always related, like a counterfeit, to something 
real that is near or remote. Again, the age of 
myths was a thousand years after Moses. 

Faith is a logical corollary of science, and the 
most noble flight of human intelligence, a com¬ 
mon corollary of common sense, the bond of 
companionship, without which there is neither 
happiness nor prosperity. It is the endless chain 
that holds the knowledge and experience of past 
generations, enabling each to commence one scale 
higher than its predecessor, reaching from Adam 
to the present. 


NATURAL MORALITY, CIVILIZATION AND 
RELIGIOUS BELIEF. 


Moral nature distinguishes between vice and 
virtue. There is a spirit in man and the inspira¬ 
tion of the Almighty givetli them understand¬ 
ing. Job , 32:8. This universal inspiration by 
the creative act gave us an intellectual and moral 
nature. We sometimes call it common sense, 
sometimes reason. Without it we would be like 
Nebuchadnezzar was when his heart was changed 
from a man’s and a beast’s heart was given unto 
him. Natural morality is the result of a natural 
endowment, given to man’s spirit by the Infinite 
Creator, in the creative act. It is called by some 
writers the first degree of reason, to distinguish 
it from reasoning. We brought it into the world 
with us. It is by virtue of this that all rational 
men recognize axioms, or first truths, upon 
presentation, without asking lor proof, and it 
being common to all rational men. we often call it 
common sense. Where it is deficient or wanting, 
neither learning nor religion will supply the 
deficiency. Common sense is like a torch-light in 
the darkness, increasing the circumference of 
vision. A man with little is better off than a 
man with none, because he can see a little way 


84 


NATURAL MORALITY. 


around himself and care for himself. Where 
there is no common sense there is no reason, and 
where there is no reason there is no responsibil¬ 
ity. Moral nature distinguishing between vice 
and virtue does not belong to physical nature, 
nor to beasts. A man with an inferior body may 
have much more common sense than his neighbor 
with his superior body. 

The horse has no moral nature. There is one 
good reason he does not possess it, and that is, 
he was made for man’s use. If he possessed the 
intelligence, reason or common sense of man, he 
would never be submissive to man’s will. As it 
is, he will carry a thief as well as his master. 
Brute nature, with all of its instinctive and ac¬ 
quired intelligence, is far below man, below 
moral nature, which we never find until we 
reach conscience, distinguishing right from 
wrong, and, like all natural laws, carrying its 
sanctions with it, its remorse and approbation. 
Moral nature is identical with the first degree of 
reason. It is manifested in heathen life. There 
we find the knowledge of the distinction between 
the right and the wrong. Conscience has been 
called the natural law of natural morality, which 
seems to be proper, because the field of natural 
morality is limited to natural knowledge which 
belongs to the common and universal inspiration 
of the creative act, and is embodied in the wis¬ 
dom of this world. 


NATURAL MORALITY. 


85 


f 


Natural morality is advocated by all secular¬ 
ists, or one-world men. It is good as far as it 
goes, but it is insufficient for the purposes of civ¬ 
ilized life. It has mercy for near relatives while 
they are friends, but for enemies it has none. 
When conscience gives commands upon an ac¬ 
quired and higher plain of knowledge, it gets 
beyond kinship and above the natural, which is 
pagan ground, and largely selfish. It is true 
secularism, or one-world-ism. Natural morality 
alone never built a civilization. Morals under 
varying conditions of humanity are, like plants, 
modified by the more or less favorable circum¬ 
stances and conditions of growth, but they could 
not exist without a fundamental identity with the 
common sense of mankind. Natural morality is 
connected with building up civilizations only 
when it is elevated by education to the plane of 
equal rights and civil authorities. Where there 
is only natural morality there is selfishness. It 
has been called by Calvin Blanchard, in his life 
of Thomas Paine, all benefiting selfishness, and 
contrasted, in his way of doing, with, what he is 
pleased to call, political demagoguery and ballot- 
box jugglery. You may be very wise in regard to 
natural laws, foreseeing the results of disobedi¬ 
ence to them, and live and die in those forms of 
paganism which rejected all authorities higher 
than self, a stranger to civilized life. There is 


86 


NATURAL MORALITY. 


no civilization without higher authorities than 
self. 

Natural conscience and natural morality, being 
limited to nature, admit of no interference on the 
part of civil or religious institutions, for when 
civil institutions have elevated conscience and 
natural morality above the simple natural, the 
morality as well as conscience is no longer sim¬ 
ply natural. Natural morality and natural con¬ 
science, when they are no more than natural, 
place us simply on pagan or heathen ground. 
Mr. Blanchard, an advocate of natural morality, 
discards all revealed religion and all legislative 
bodies, whether in one form of government or 
another, and bases his cause upon selfishness. 
Natural morality is seen in the simple distinction 
between right and wrong, which distinction is in 
the mind of every rational heathen, and this con¬ 
science gives. Jude, speaking of these charac¬ 
ters, says, “they know nothing only what they 
know naturally as brute beasts; and in those 
things,” he says, “they corrupt themselves.” 

Mr. Blanchard, with his natural morality, lands 
himself in anarchy, and then proceeds to murder 
his own theory by denouncing the law of natural 
morality—conscience, saying it is a barricade of 
hypocrisy. And then, as if it were not enough to 
remove natural morality from the earth, he says : 
“Vice and virtue are the most mischievous terms 
that ever crept into the English vocabulary.” 


NATURAL MORALITY. 


87 


Now, I suggest an axiom : No natural conscience, 
no natural morality. Where there is no natural 
conscience there is no natural knowledge. Such 
men plead for a natural morality and destroy the 
first truths upon which all morality is built. 
And this they do in trying to get rid of all that 
they regard as diseases of civilization and re¬ 
ligion, committing suicide in logic. Where there 
is no moral nature there is no conscience, there 
is nothing to educate. He who has no moral 
nature has no common sense, no reason. Com¬ 
mon sense, being the first degree of reason and 
the only natural morality known in intelligent 
thought, can be educated. 

Acquired morality is the result of educating 
the conscience, or common sense, and this educa¬ 
tion is an increase of the light of knowledge, en¬ 
abling us to see away beyond the natural and 
know more in the field of human action and in¬ 
terests ; more of that which should be done and 
should not be done. Civilizations are the result 
of the education of conscience, which is the unit 
lying at the beginning of every series of progress¬ 
ive steps leading from nature up to nature’s God. 
To stop at and with the natural is to stop with 
natural self, and this is to discard all education, 
moral, civil and religious, which is pure anarchy 
and irreligion. 

Why should men of common sense, who advo¬ 
cate progression, stop on the first round of the 


88 


NATURAL MORALITY. 


ladder? The least degree of civilized life under 
the higher forms of government is far better than 
paganism, far better than heathen life. Lift con¬ 
science up, by increasing its knowledge, until it 
is in the enjoyment of both civil and divine life, 
a life which is no painted counterfeit, such as 
hypocrites wear, and then there will be a denial 
of all improper, degrading gratifications of 
fleshly desires, and a yielding to the leadings of 
a spiritual nature. Men who have never been 
thus educated and elevated above natural moral¬ 
ity are sure to live after the flesh, because they 
see no reason why they should live otherwise. 
Men who are so debased in their minds, even in 
a civilized country, have nothing but the civil au¬ 
thorities to fear ; have nothing in their hearts to 
keep them from midnight crimes, which may be 
beyond the reach of the civil authorities. Men 
without faith in God and future rewards have 
indulged in all manner of lewdness and debauch¬ 
ery, while all manner of crimes have been pre¬ 
vented by such faith. Control the mind or heart 
by religious beliefs and you control the fountain 
or source of all deliberate action. 

The good man out of the good treasure of his 
heart bringeth forth good things, and the evil 
man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth 
forth evil things. Faith, in a Christian sense, 
purifies the heart by elevating the conscience to 
God and spiritual things. This elevation lifts the 


NATURAL MORALITY. 


89 


man above all heathenism, even higher than 
mere civil life into a divine life. 

The sanctions of natural laws are experienced 
under the natural. 

The sanctions of civil laws are experienced un¬ 
der the civil, and the sanctions of religion are 
experienced under religion. Natural conscience 
has nature in it and all around it. When it is 
elevated to civil life it has civil authority in it 
and all around it, and when it is elevated to a 
divine life it has God in it and all around it. 
Thus conditioned we live as seeing him who is 
invisible, doing all as unto God, and not unto 
men. But we never came thus to God without 
faith. The light of natural morality always ex¬ 
isted in man’s nature, but it was always insuffi¬ 
cient until it was coupled with the knowledge of 
the motives of revealed religion; but it was al¬ 
ways the germ, the twig that is bent by educa¬ 
tion. If it be without education, its light will 
always be limited to a very narrow circumfer¬ 
ence, and it will be liable to be misguided, but 
whether guided aright or misguided, it is always 
found where rational men are found. All mis¬ 
sionary efforts proceed in view of these facts. 
Conscience is educated in many ways, and is 
much abused. 

A Christian conscience has a spirit in it that 
secularism—one-world-ism—does not possess. It 
is not the mere acts performed, but the motives by 


90 


NATURAL MORALITY. 


which and the spirit in which they are per¬ 
formed, that constitutes Christian morality. To 
do all as unto God with a sense or spirit of sub¬ 
mission to His authority is the greatest work of 
human life. Thus living you are right in motive, 
right in spirit, right in action, provided you are 
doing the things commanded. Worship is rever¬ 
ence and adoration following a spiritual condi¬ 
tion, a leaning upon God. Professor Clifford 
said : “It can not be doubted that belief in God 
is a comfort and solace to those who hold it, and 
that the loss of it is a very painful loss. It can 
not be doubted, at least by many of us in this 
generation, who either profess it now, or received 
it in our childhood and have parted from it since 
with such searching trouble as only cradle faiths 
can cause. We have seen the spring sun shine 
out of an empty heaven, to light up a soulless 
earth. We have felt with utter loneliness that the 
great companion is dead. Our children, it may be 
hoped, will know that sorrow only by the light 
of a wandering compassion. Companionship is 
the school of character, and God is the Christian’s 
greatest companion. He is working with us for 
the right. When we are banded with our Father 
in heaven and his son, Jesus, the Christ, and 
with all saints, and with the angels in heaven, in 
trying to bring men from their sinful ways, we 
are working out the greatest of all the purposes 
of God. Frederick Harrison said : “If the relig- 


NATURAL MORALITY. 


91 


ious foundations and the religious sanctions of 
morality be given up, human life runs the risk of 
sinking into depravity, since morality without 
religion is insufficient for general civilization.” 

In the Christian life all morality is united with 
God. He is not a secondary figure, but the cen¬ 
tral sun. In view of the limited character of 
natural morality and its insufficiency for the pur¬ 
poses of civilization some writers have overlooked 
it altogether. Lord Selborne says : “Looking at 
the thing in a general way, morality has not flour¬ 
ished among either civilized or uncivilized men 
when religious belief has been generally lost or 
utterly debased. Not to dwell upon the case of 
savage races, the modern Hindoos and Chinese 
have long been civilized, but are certainly not 
moral; nor can anything worse be conceived than 
the morality of the Greeks and Romans at the 
height of their civilization.” This author is not 
alone in seemingly overlooking natural morality, 
or conscience. Dr. Ward says : “The absence of 
religious belief in a personal God and personal 
immortality does not simply injure morality, but, 
if the unbelievers carry out their views consist¬ 
ently, utterly destroys it.” Closely connected 
with the stern self-denial and strength of charac¬ 
ter so prominently manifested among the first 
Christians was their moral courage. It requires 
very little experience and knowledge of men to 


92 


NATURAL MORALITY. 


enable us to see that a majority of people are 
moral cowards. 

“There is a demoralizing miasma which the 
school-boy experiences when he is laughed at on 
account of singularity of dress or appearance. 
The slavery of fashion among people of mature 
age is based upon this same miasmatic influence. 
The fear of standing “so and so” has kept many 
a public man from expressing an honest convic¬ 
tion, when by being a moral hero, and saying his 
piece, he might have put a gag upon the mouth 
of a great wrong. How very different was the 
atmosphere the Savior breathed! There he 
stands, in the New Testament, and in the name 
of God calls upon men to renounce their most 
cherished sins, and trampled under foot the most 
loved idols of all the people. And there stands 
one of his disciples, before an enraged assembly, 
saying, “If it be lawful in the sight of God, to 
hearken unto men rather than unto God, judge 
ye;” in those days such rare manhood was as 
common among Christians as cowardice is now 
among the masses of the people. The true Chris¬ 
tian is a moral hero, has the spirit of an unflinch¬ 
ing martyr, governed by principle at all times 
and under all circumstances ; one who cares all 
for truth and right, even at the expense of sacri¬ 
ficing self, and therefore is no egotist, vainly 
puffed up with the pride of self conceit.— Blackey. 


NATURAL MORALITY. 


93 


The Nazarene was a model of heroism ; he stood 
by the right at the expense of the cross “The 
moral heroism of his followers immortalized their 
cause, and conquered the Roman empire, and 
the Greeks and Romans learned how to be moral 
heroes from the missionaries of Palestine.” 


GENESIS AND GEOLOGY. 


“In the beginning God created the heavens 
and the earth this creation is placed in the past 
tense and followed by the work, of the formative 
period, of six days. There was a condition of 
things prior to the first day, which is also put in 
the past tense, and is expressed in the words : 
“And the earth was without form and void,” or, 
as it is in the original, “Empty and unfurnished, ” 
“and darkness was upon the face of the great 
deep.” This state of things is spoken of in the 
language of the Lord addressed to Job , 38:1^: 
“Where wast thou when I laid the foundations 
of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding. 
Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou 
knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon 
it? Whereupon are the foundations thereof fas¬ 
tened? or who laid the corner stone thereof? 
When the morning stars sang together, and all 
the sons of God shouted for joy? Or who shut up 
the sea with doors, when it brake forth, as if it 
had issued out of the womb? When I made the 
cloud the garment thereof, and thick darkness a 
swaddlingband for it?” 

Here the Lord talks to Job as Genesis talks to 
us. The earth was clothed with a cloud, and 


GENESIS AND GEOLOGY. 


95 


thick darkness was a swaddlingband for it until 
the spirit of God moved upon the face of the 
waters, and God said: “Let there be light,” in 
the singular. This was as different from the two 
great lights placed in the heavens as the abstract 
is from the concrete ; as when I say, light travels 
195,000 miles per second, which is very different 
from saying, put out the lights. The original 
terms, in the third verse of Genesis 1, and the 
fourteenth verse, are more different. They are as 
different as light and light-houses. In the third 
verse God commanded the light to shine out of 
darkness —See 2 Cor., 1^:6. It was thick darkness, 
a swaddlingband for the earth ; this, with the 
cloud which clothed it, was temporary, limited to 
a certain period of time. The two great lights 
to rule the day and the night were located in 
the heavens, but the light of Genesis 1:3, was 
located in the thick darkness. The light of the 
sun never reached our earth until its garment of 
cloud and thick darkness, or swaddlingband, 
gave way for its appearance, and this change of 
its condition took place when the spirit of God 
moved upon the face of the waters, and broke up 
the swaddlingband. 

Genesis 1 speaks of the earth alone as need¬ 
ing to be illuminated. No verse, in the first 
chapter of Genesis and the first verse, speaks of 
the creation of the lights of heaven. These may 
have been illuminating other planets for ages be- 


96 


GENESIS AND GEOLOGY. 


fore earth’s swaddlingband was removed so as 
to let the sunlight in. God, who continues draw¬ 
ing light out of the dark thunder-cloud, in the 
night, commanded the light to shine out of dark¬ 
ness. The first chapter of Genesis does not as¬ 
sert that the heavens and the earth were created 
in six days, but in the beginning. The work of 
the six days is not expressed in the original by 
the word created, but by another word. The 
words create and make are very different words, 
which present us with a contrast between the 
work of creation and formation. Creation was a 
work of the beginning, formation was the work 
of the six days. The original terms are bra and 
oshe. The beginning was before the first day, 
how long before no man can tell, because we are 
neither informed by the Bible nor science. Science 
and the Bible are in perfect harmony upon this 
question. Geologists may fathom the depths of 
the earth, and astronomers may scan the heavens 
with their telescopes, and we will place all the 
truths and facts they discover in our Master’s 
crown. We never shall be able to locate the be¬ 
ginning, for it is placed in antiquity beyond our 
ability to calculate. As a scriptural fact it simply 
introduces us to the Heavenly Father as the cre¬ 
ator of all things, and to the Christ as the one 
through whom, or by whom, all things were 
created. 

Geologists themselves borrowed this Bible 


GENESIS AND GEOLOGY. 


97 


phrase “In the beginning,” to designate those 
stratas of the earth which they call the primary, 
or first formations. The phrase in the Bible 
marks the last point on the ocean of an eternity 
that is past. It is the only positive phrase by 
which we can express the most remote period of 
past duration. It is not a date nor point in 
time, but a period, an immense cycle. It has 
but one boundary, and that is where the visible 
universe rises out of the invisible. It carries us 
back beyond the era of human existence to indef¬ 
inite -ages, to the times when all things were 
created by the Christ, and leaves us there with 
Him. He was before all things.—See Col., 1:16. 
In the eighth chapter of Proverbs wisdom is per¬ 
sonified in these words : “The Lord possessed me 
in the beginning of His way, before His works of 
old. I was set up from everlasting, from the be¬ 
ginning, or ever the earth was. When there were 
no depths, then I was brought forth ; when there 
were no fountains abounding with water. Before 
the mountains were settled, before the hills was 
I brought forth : While as yet He had not made 
the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of 
the dust of the world.” When? Answer, “In 
the beginning of His way.” “Before His works 
of old.” 

In Micah 5 :2, it is said : “But thou Bethlehem 
Ephratah, though thou be little among the thou¬ 
sands of Judah, yet out of thee shall He come 
7 


98 


GENESIS AND GEOLOGY. 


forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose 
goings-forth have been from of old, from ever¬ 
lasting.” In the second chapter of Matthew and 
the sixth verse this language is applied to the 
Christ, and credited to this prophet. I am often 
amused with the manner in which some men as¬ 
sail the first chapter of Genesis. In the Jewish 
talmud we are told that a prince said to Rabbi 
Gamaliel: “Your God is a thief, he surprised 
Adam in his sleep, and stole a rib from him. 
The rabbi’s daughter overheard the speech and 
stepping forward, feigning terror and dismay, she 
cried out: “My Liege! My Liege ! Justice! Re¬ 
venge!” “What has happened?” asked the 
prince. She replied: “A robber crept secretly 
into our house, carried away a silver goblet and 
left a gold one in its place.” “What an upright 
thief,” exclaimed the prince. “Would that such 
robberies were more frequent.” The lady said : 
“Then, sir, that is the kind of thief our Creator 
was, for he stole a rib from Adam, and gave him 
a beautiful wife in its place.” 

“Well said!” said the prince. In referring to 
the law of Moses men are committing the same 
foolish blunder, for law is as necessary to human¬ 
ity’s welfare as Adam’s wife was to his. Laws 
penal as well as civil are necessary to a civiliza¬ 
tion. The ancient law was a great blessing to 
Abraham’s family. It existed with a people, and 
in an age when sins required heroic treatment; 


GENESIS AND GEOLOGY. 


99 


and while its penalties made sin appear exceed¬ 
ing sinful, by putting sinners out of the way, it 
left a grand civilization in their place. Men were 
not obliged to disobey the law. There has been 
no time, from Adam till now, when all men could 
be governed without law. During all the cen¬ 
turies there have been those who were lawless, 
who disregarded law ; could not be governed with 
law in a respectable manner. As Jannes and 
Jambres withstood Moses so do lawless men resist 
the law. And still the lawless would be more 
numerous if there was no fear of its penalties. 


SOURCES OF OUR KNOWLEDGE. 


There is an internal source of knowledge as 
well as an external. Our senses connect us with 
the outside world, but this would be of no conse¬ 
quence to us without the conscious intelligence 
dwelling within. External objects set us to 
thinking. But to conclude, for this reason, that 
the intellect or mind is not a source of knowl¬ 
edge is absurd ; it is to acknowledge an objective 
without a subjective, and this is the most rank 
materialism. If it be right to strike out of exist¬ 
ence the inner mind, the higher nature of man, 
then it remains necessarily true that all our ideas 
are immediate effects resulting from external ob¬ 
jects acting upon our senses. In this case the 
same object of sense should always produce the 
same ideas, not only in the same man, but in 
every man. Two hundred men, looking on the 
same object, should be impressed just alike, and 
experience the same thoughts; otherwise the 
same cause will not produce the same effects, 
which would certainly be the case if all things 
were equal; but they are not, and the inequality 
belongs to the subjective—the inner mind, and 
this inequality causes a great variety of thoughts 
in a score of men looking at the same object, be- 


SOURCES OF OUR KNOWLEDGE. 


101 


cause they differ in their mental conditions. It 
is possible that no two of them will be impressed 
alike. Their different minds give rise to a diver¬ 
sity of ideas, and this can never be accounted for 
upon the hypothesis that there is but one source 
of knowledge, and that the objective. We are 
logically driven to find another source, and by 
adding this to the external we have a two-fold 
fountain, and from the different mental condi¬ 
tions we may account for diversity of emotions 
and thoughts. 

The internal source of knowledge is the mind 
itself in action. The thinker dwells within, and 
external objects may set us to thinking, or, in 
many a given case, may not. Voltaire put it thus, 
“I do not get my thoughts from external sur¬ 
roundings, for they have none to give.” Yet we 
say the external world is a source of knowledge, 
because being connected with it by our senses we 
are excited to think, or to mental activity. The 
immediate cause of every thought is within, the 
remote or stimulating cause is often without. 
The mind lies at the root of all knowledge. It 
can not be the brain, for all brains are alike, with 
the exception that they may be small or large. 
They are alike in their physical qualities. Un¬ 
believers in the Christian religion generally adopt 
the physical-force theory of thought, the materi¬ 
alistic idea, that all our ideas are pictures on the 
brain, made by external objects of sense. And 


102 


SOURCES OF OUR KNOWLEDGE. 


why do they? The answer is this : It is easy to 
banish religion when you have robbed yourself 
of all that makes religion of any value to you, 
in the ages to come. If a man is all animal he 
will die like an animal, and death will end all. 
If our personality and individuality is to be 
predicated upon animal nature, then the distinc¬ 
tion between person and thing is broken down, 
and all is lost in death. 

First truths, or axioms, need only to be pre¬ 
sented to any man of intelligence and his imme¬ 
diate consent is given. Reasoning from axioms 
is called demonstrative reasoning, because a legit¬ 
imate conclusion from an axiom enters conscious¬ 
ness as knowledge. Reasoning from first truths 
and axioms is demonstrative. All other reason¬ 
ing is called speculative reasoning. The law that 
life only produces life, and the axiom that invo¬ 
lution lies behind evolution, and that you can get 
no more out of a thing than there is in it, are a 
trinity of axiomatic first truths compelling us to 
relegate life and intelligence to the spiritual na¬ 
ture of man, and this spiritual nature to that 
eternal living spirit who gave it, and He, God, is 
our ultimate in our inductive Christian philos- 
ophy. 

Life, being involved in the spiritual nature of 
man, is of the genus of an imperishable nature. 
We can put no cut-off behind us, and certainly 
none ahead of us, for imperishable nature can 


SOURCES OF OUR KNOWLEDGE. 


103 


not die. Carpenter, in his large work upon phys¬ 
iology, eighth edition, by Francis Smith, p. 56, 
says : “The soul, it has been remarked, is that 
side of our nature which is in relation with the 
infinite, and it is the existence of this relation, 
in whatever way we may describe it, which seems 
to constitute one of the most distinctive peculiar¬ 
ities of man.” By this imperishable spirit, often 
called the soul by modern writers, man is con¬ 
nected with the higher order of beings in which 
intelligence exists untrammeled by the corporeal 
mechanism through which it here operates. 

Huxley says : “I understand and respect the 
meaning of the word ‘soul,’ as used by pagan 
and Christian philosophers, for what they believe 
to be the imperishable seat of human personality, 
bearing throughout eternity its burden of woe, 
or its capacity for adoration and love. I confess 
that my dull moral sense does not enable me to 
see anything base or selfish in the desire for a 
future life among the spirits of the just made 
perfect, or even among a few such poor fallible 
souls as one has known here below .”—Modern 
Symposium, p. 82. Then on page 250 he gives us 
these words : ‘ ‘In like manner it seems to me im¬ 
possible to overestimate the influence of specula¬ 
tive beliefs, as to the nature of the Deity, apart 
from all idea of rewards and punishments upon 
personal morality. The lover of moral beauty, 
struggling through a world full of sorrow and 


104 


SOURCES OF OUR KNOWLEDGE. 


sin, is surely as much stronger for believing that 
sooner or later a vision of perfect peace and good¬ 
ness will burst upon him, as the toiler up a 
mountain for the belief that beyond crag and 
snow lie home and rest.” 

“When unbelief in a future state of being tri¬ 
umphs in the human heart, it gives the lie to 
scientific first truths, crowns the tyrant Death 
forever on his throne, and seals the victories of 
the grave over the whole human family; wraps 
the tomb in eternal darkness ; suffers not one of 
the great and good of all the ages to see the light 
of immortality.” It identifies the noblest of all 
earth’s sons with the lowest and meanest of all 
insects. It robs man of every noble estimate of 
himself, murders all his hopes of future welfare, 
and throws him out upon the ocean of life, to 
drift with the winds and tides until, in some un¬ 
expected moment, he is sucked down in the 
whirlpool of annihilation. 

What do they give us for all they have taken 
away? Nothing but the mists of darkness or 
ignorance, with the prospect of the blackness of 
eternal darkness in the great future. They say, 
“reason is left.” Left where? Left in the grave? 
Oh, they mean to say, reason is our standard of 
truth and right. Whose reason? Well, from 
their standpoint it is called natural morality— 
morality without belief in God and future re¬ 
wards, pagan reason. Yes! Their materialistic 


SOURCES OF OUR KNOWLEDGE. 


105 


philosophy reduces us in this life to paganism 
and death to dust, or the transmigration theory 
of existence in some animal or bird, or to a wan¬ 
dering table-rapping spirit in the midst of lying 
spirits as well as others, both in and out of the 
flesh! And this based upon assumed revela¬ 
tions from the world of all kinds of spirits. 
There is no such thing as a standard of right and 
wrong in pagan common sense, for here there is 
no harmony outside of a very limited sense of 
right and wrong; nothing here but the twig, or 
natural capacity for education. All men have 
not the same amount of common sense, nor the 
same degree of natural capacity, even for educa¬ 
tion. Reason is left? It just amounts to this, 
every man is his own standard, and standards will 
differ as men differ. Some men have very little 
common sense, and some have a great deal more. 

All men are not trained alike in reasoning, nor 
in thinking. There is no common standard here 
outside of axioms and intuitive truths, and these 
are only a foundation for education, and the 
structures reared upon these differ as widely as 
men in science and religion differ. The greatest 
amount of reasoning is of the speculative kind, 
having nothing to do with axioms and first truths, 
but are air castles built upon hypotheses. Vol¬ 
taire said : “My reason alone, referring to reas¬ 
oning from axioms and first truths, teaches me 
that there is a God who is a Creator of all 


106 


SOURCES OF OUR KNOWLEDGE. 


things.” Another man’s little reason, or com¬ 
mon sense, or speculative reasoning, allows him 
to say, in his heart, there is no God. If I am to 
be governed by my reason alone, and you are to 
be governed by yours, and so on to the last man, 
then every man is to be his own governor, and 
universal selfishness will be the rule of life. So 
here we are as we always have been, and im¬ 
provement is not to be expected. 

One man’s reason guides him into bankruptcy, 
another man’s reason guides him, in his efforts 
to accumulate wealth, into the penitentiary, and 
another man’s reason leads him into Mormon- 
ism, and another is led into Calvinism. What a 
wonderful millennium this reason alone would 
bring about! Secularists dream of a secular 
heaven, or paradise somewhat after the style of a 
school of freethinkers, where they can live in a 
colony as independent as bumble bees. Their 
hopes are high, are they not? They say: “One 
world at a time.” Their heaven is of short dura¬ 
tion, the grave wipes it out. The ancient unbe¬ 
liever’s motto is appropriate just here : “Let us 
eat and drink for to-morrow we die.” 

The Christian’s faith takes him beyond the 
grave ; in thought it leads him across the gulf 
between the living and the dead, and unites him 
by a glorious hope with the imperishable, sets 
him down with his Lord. His motto is, “For me 
to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” His stand- 


SOURCES OF OUR KNOWLEDGE. 


107 


ards are first truths and axioms in science, and 
the word of God in religion. The Christian’s 
standards are unchangeable, everywhere the 
same. Secularists see the pillars upon which our 
bridge across the gulf between life and death rests, 
for they have given to them a name, viz., the 
“unknown.” But it is a little strange that they 
should profess to know enough about the “un¬ 
known” to know that the Christian’s religion and 
scientific axioms are both false. Their “un¬ 
known” consists in first causes “with which they 
say they have nothing to do.” Yet they are all 
the while trying to show that the Christian is 
wrong about first causes ; these being their un¬ 
known, how are they to tell who is right or wrong 
about them? What do they know about the un¬ 
known? Do they mean what they say? If they 
do their ignorance is profound. They have never 
yet crossed the gulf lying between the organic 
kingdoms of life and the mineral kingdom of uni¬ 
versal death. According to their own showing 
their boat remains chained to the shore. They 
tried the imaginary bridge of spontaneous gener¬ 
ation of life from dead atoms, and found nothing 
but quicksand to rest its pillars upon ; then they 
abandoned the enterprise. 

In logic and scientific investigation upon this 
subject they have sunk in the “gulf of gulfs,” 
sunk in their professed ignorance, trying to repu¬ 
diate that which they profess to know nothing 


108 


SOURCES OF OUR KNOWLEDGE. 


about. How long will it take them to rise? 
And what have they gained for themselves or 
anybody else by adopting the name, the “un¬ 
known, or unknowable”? Voltaire, in corre¬ 
spondence with one of these very wise fellows, 
said : “We are all swimming in a sea of which we 
have never seen the shore. Woe be to those who 
fight while they swim : Land who can, but he 
that cries out to me, ‘You swim in vain, there is 
no land,’ disheartens me, and deprives me of all 
my strength. What is the object of our dispute? 
To console our unhappy existence? Who con¬ 
soles it most, you or I? You yourself own in 
some passages of your work that belief in a God 
has withheld some men on the brink of crime. 
For me this acknowledgment is enough. If this 
has prevented but ten assassinations, but ten 
calamities, but ten calumnies, but ten iniquitous 
judgments, on the earth, I hold that the whole 
earth ought to embrace it .”—Philosophic Die., p. 
385. The most beautiful, soul-inspiring harmo¬ 
nies that I ever contemplated are those of science 
and revealed religion. The vital spirit in the 
physical system is neither a physical nor chem¬ 
ical force, because it is the opposite of both in its 
struggle for existence in the body. They disin¬ 
tegrate, and it builds up ; it is the wonderful 
organization builder. As a power, or force, it is 
separate from the forces of the non-living world. 
The body without the spirit is dead, being alone. 


SOURCES OF OUR KNOWLEDGE. 


109 


No spirit of life, no organism, is as worthy of be¬ 
ing set down as an axiom, as any other axiom. 
It is but another way of saying, No builder, no 
building. 

Lionel Beal says : “It is difficult to conceive 
how any one, who has thought over the facts 
which are well known to every working student 
in physiology, could have succeeded in so mis¬ 
leading himself and others as even to hint that 
the formation of tissue of any kind could be ex¬ 
plained by physics and chemistry.” He then 
adds, “There is not the shadow of argument 
founded upon fact, or upon the results of ob¬ 
servation, to give countenance to such a doctrine. 
The idea that the first molecules of an organism 
arranged themselves, that the forces were the 
forces of the non-living substance, were inherent 
in the non-living, and that these so arranged the 
molecules that tissue resulted, is supported by no 
argument whatever, neither is it supported by 
any evidence whatever.” Yet these ideas must 
be true upon any other than Christian grounds. 
The spirit of man is the spirit of life from Cod. 
.It is his genus. He is a spirit. The inorganic 
or mineral kingdom without God would have re¬ 
mained forever under the reign of universal 
death. Not one particle of matter in the min¬ 
eral kingdom ever took on life without coming in 
contact with life. 

All science, pertaining to life, demonstrates the 


110 


SOURCES OF OUR KNOWLEDGE. 


fact that all life is from the invisible, is inherent 
in the invisible, and that all organisms proceed 
from life. We accept this as a simple incompre¬ 
hensible fact of the nature of a first truth. Paul 
said upon the hill of Mars : “God giveth to all 
life and breath.” Life first. Adam lived before 
he breathed, for dead lungs do not breathe. The 
same is true as an order in the kiligdom of na¬ 
ture. Spiritual nature ever was, and is, and for¬ 
ever will be, the medium of connection between 
God and the mineral kingdom. It is the living 
link between the living God and the living world. 
Paul said : “The invisible things of Him from 
the creation of the world are clearly seen, being 
understood by the things which are made, even 
His eternal power and divinity. Here science 
and religion are in wedlock. We regret that 
there are those in our country who say God is un¬ 
known to them, and yet have intelligence enough 
to know an axiom, or first truth. The existence 
of God is a legitimate conclusion arising out of 
axioms. A man is just as rational when he de¬ 
nies an axiom as when he denies a legitimate 
conclusion drawn from an axiom. And the man 
who does either is guilty of an irrational act. 
There is no life without antecedent life, never 
was, and never will be. 


CONCEPTION AND JUDGMENT. 


Men conceive thousands of things about which 
they have no faith at all. Such as a mountain of 
gold or a horse with wings. So conception does 
not necessarily carry faith along with it, but be¬ 
lief carries conception, for he that believes must 
have some conception lying behind his belief, a 
conception of that which he believes. We can not 
have the belief of any object without a concep¬ 
tion of the object. We can not remember things 
of which we have no conception, and we can not 
reason about things of which we have no concep¬ 
tion. Before we exert our mental powers we 
must have some conception of that which we will 
to do. A conception of some object always goes 
before desire, aversion, love and hatred. We 
must have conception of the object. In every 
mental action, in every thought, there must be 
conception ; this is always at the bottom. Con¬ 
ception is unlike judgment in this respect, that it 
neither affirms nor denies, while every judgment 
affirms or denies the truthfulness of a proposi¬ 
tion, or of propositions. In conception there is 
no judgment, belief, or opinion included. In corn- 
111 


112 


CONCEPTION AND JUDGMENT. 


mon speech we say a conception is true or false. 
When we speak thus we mean by conception 
opinion. Every opinion is either true or false, 
but a simple conception expresses no opinion, no 
judgment. It is defined by Webster, apprehen¬ 
sion of anything by the mind. The act of con¬ 
ceiving in the mind that mental act, or combina¬ 
tion of acts, by which an idea or notion is formed 
of an absent object of perception, or of a sensa¬ 
tion formerly felt. 

When we see an object with our eyes open we 
have a perception of it. When the same object is 
presented to the mind with the eyes shut, in idea 
only, or in memory, we have a conception of it. 

Conception may be sometimes used for the 
power of conceiving ideas, as when we say, a 
thing is not within our conception. Some wri¬ 
ters have defined conception as a distinct faculty 
of the mind, but it is considered by others as 
memory, and possibly with propriety. It also 
signifies purpose conceived, or conception of an 
act to be performed,view or opinion, apprehension, 
knowledge, conceit, affected sentiment or thought. 
All the words by which we designate a simple 
conception are used to designate opinions. But 
in all such cases there is some judgment implied 
in what we call a conception. Conception and 
judgment are often very closely related. Con¬ 
ception always going before and essential to judg¬ 
ment. No conception, no judgment; but the rule 


CONCEPTION AND JUDGMENT. 


113 


does not admit of the reverse, that is to say, there 
may be conception and no judgment following. 
Simple or bare conception is what logicians call 
apprehension, and implies neither opinion nor 
judgment. 

A conception is that which is conceived in the 
mind. It is said that it is one thing to conceive 
and another to execute. A man may think for 
a long time what he is to do, and after all do 
nothing. Conceiving as well as resolving are 
what the schoolmen have called imminent acts 
of the mind, which necessarily produce nothing 
beyond themselves. The first kind of concep¬ 
tions are called fancy pictures, or creatures of 
the imagination. They are not the copies of any 
original that exists, but are originals themselves. 
Examples, Swift’s conception of the Island of La- 
puta, and the country of the Lilliputians, and 
Cervantes, of Don Quixote. We can conceive of 
such things distinctly, though they never had 
any existence. We do not, in our conception of 
them, ascribe the qualities of true or false to 
them, because they are not accompanied with 
any affirmation or negation as touching those 
qualities. The first kind of conceptions are creat¬ 
ures of the imagination, accompanied with no 
belief whatever. 

There are other conceptions which we call 
copies, because they have an original or arche- 
8 


114 


CONCEPTION AND JUDGMENT. 


type to which they refer, and with which they 
are believed to agree/; and we call them true or 
false as they agree or disagree with the standards 
to which they are referred. And these are of 
two kinds. First, pictures taken from life. We 
have conceptions of certain things really exist¬ 
ing, such as the city of New York, or the govern¬ 
ment of Great Britain. These are originals and 
our conceptions of them are true or false as they 
agree or disagree with the originals. 

Second, things which really exist, which are 
God’s creatures, the whole nature of which He 
only knows. We know them in part, and for this 
very reason our conceptions of them are in all 
cases imperfect and inadequate, but may be true 
as far as they reach. 

The third kind of conceptions are of species of 
things, such as man or elephant, and species of 
qualities, such as wisdom, or courage, or equality, 
or similitude. 

Things are classified by men into kinds or sorts 
according to their agreement in attributes, and 
have a general name given to them, signifying 
only the attributes common to each individual in 
the class. That such names may answer their 
purpose it is only necessary that all who use 
them should have the same conception of them, 
because the common meaning of these names is 
the standard by which our conceptions are 
formed, and they are true or false as they agree 


CONCEPTION AND JUDGMENT. 


115 


or disagree with this standard. My conception 
of murder in the first degree is true or false as it 
agrees or disagrees with the meaning of the 
terms as settled in the laws of my country. 

General conceptions are called universals, and 
are always designated by general terms. All 
terms are general except proper names. Gen¬ 
eral terms are the signs of general conceptions, 
and the standard of these is the use that other 
men make of the same general words or terms, 
so we who speak the English language may, 
with a perfect understanding of our language, 
agree in our knowledge of things as well as in 
our faith, provided we avoid mere hypothesis in 
both science and religion, and in such a case all 
verbal disputes should terminate. But it is im¬ 
possible for a man to express himself with clear¬ 
ness and so as to be distinctly understood where 
his knowledge of the meaning of words and his 
conceptions both are at fault. Indistinct concep¬ 
tions are the cause of many errors in judgment, 
and an improper use of words is another source 
of error. Men who conceive things in the same 
manner are of the same -judgment. Is it possi¬ 
ble for men to disagree touching the conclusion 
of a syllogism when they have the same concep¬ 
tions of the premises? A man can not be con¬ 
vinced by what he can not, or does not, under¬ 
stand. It is a matter of first importance to make 
yourselves understood. Every man has not the 


116 


CONCEPTION AND JUDGMENT. 


same ability to do this. Nature has placed us 
here, and our natural ability and training has 
made a great difference between man and man, 
yet we may have clear conceptions to a very con¬ 
siderable degree, and distinct apprehensions of 
things which we speak and reason about, and 
therefore should always try to make ourselves 
understood. 

In our manhood our most simple conceptions 
are not those which nature presents to us, be¬ 
cause we have ability to analyze objects of nature, 
and conceive their attributes one by one and to 
give a name to each which extends in its mean¬ 
ing to the single attribute. And this single at¬ 
tribute is our simplest conception. When we 
analyze body we form to ourselves the concep¬ 
tions of extension, solidity, space, a point, a 
line, a surface, all of more simple character 
than itself. Our conception of body is made up 
of these simple elements just as our concep¬ 
tion of matter is made up of its properties, and 
as our conception of mind is made up of its 
qualities or attributes. Imagination is such that 
we may take the simple ingredients, or attributes, 
or properties, and may pick and choose, and ar¬ 
range until we have an endless variety, almost, 
of combinations, complex things which are only 
things of the imagination clearly conceived, 
though never in existence outside of thought, 
perceived only in mental vision. Here you dis- 


CONCEPTION AND JUDGMENT. 


117 


coyer that I use perception where it is only men¬ 
tal vision interchangeably with conception. And 
in all such cases these are to be distinguished 
from every other faculty of the mind. It is also 
worthy of remark that the Cartesian philosophy 
treats conception and perception as one and the 
same faculty. The other faculties are concerned 
about realities only, while mental perception and 
conception are often concerned about things 
which never had an existence. The unlearned, 
guided by their common sense, believe that the 
real objects of sense which they perceive certainly 
exist, but they also know that they can see in 
mental vision or imagination a thousand things 
that never existed, and that the bare conception 
of a thing is not even a presumption of its exist¬ 
ence. 

Strictly speaking in abstraction, I perceive 
nothing that is difficult to be understood, or put 
into practice. What is more easy than distin¬ 
guishing the different attributes belonging to a 
subject? In the case of man, his size, complex¬ 
ion, age, fortune, birth, profession and many 
other things that are his. To speak of these 
things, and reason about them with clearness, is 
abstraction, and this is easy work. There may 
be distinctions demanding close attention and 
an acquaintance with the subject that is not 
usual, or common. A lawyer ought to excel in 
distinctions in crimes, and contracts, and actions 


118 


CONCEPTION AND JUDGMENT. 


in courts, and a doctor ought to excel in distinc¬ 
tions in diseases and medicines. A man who 
does not in abstract reasonings will make many 
mistakes, and is liable to make a failure in any 
profession, and more especially in the practice of 
medicine, because here there is a constant and 
continual demand upon his powers of abstrac¬ 
tion. The symptoms of a disease may be easily 
distinguished and disjoined in our conception, 
and at the same time can not be separated in the 
subject. I can separate, in thought, solidity 
from extension, and both these from weight. In 
extension I can separate length from breadth, 
and both these from thickness, but none of these 
attributes can be separated from body. Then we 
must always remember that there may be attri¬ 
butes belonging to a subject, or disease of which 
we have no knowledge, but this does not inter¬ 
fere with conceiving those attributes or symptoms 
which we may know. 

Abstraction contrasts with generalization, 
which is the observance of one or more attributes 
or symptoms common to many subjects or dis¬ 
eases. So you discover that the doctor who is a 
good physician is the one who is good in abstrac¬ 
tion and in generalization, for their entire prac¬ 
tice lies inside of these mental processes. It is 
well to remark that both these are commonly in¬ 
cluded under the name of abstraction. 


CONCEPTION AND JUDGMENT. 


119 


The ability to reason is one of the prerogatives 
of inferior intelligences. We can conceive of a 
superior unlimited understanding to which all 
truth appears intuitively. We do not ascribe rea¬ 
soning to the Infinite mind, because it implies a 
limitation of the understanding. Among men, to 
use reasoning in self-evident things is like a man 
walking upon crutches with a good pair of legs. 

Reasoning upon many subjects strengthens the 
faculty and furnishes the mind with a capital 
stock for future use. Every line of reasoning 
with which we grow familiar is a highway to 
many other lines. And then the man who has 
reasoned most possesses an advantage over others 
who have reasoned less. Every calling, profes¬ 
sion, or rank in life has a mode of thinking, and 
of reflection proper to itself. The bulk'of men of 
the same rank and occupation are cast into the 
same mental mold, and the mold itself changes 
with new inventions, with intercourse with 
strangers, slowly and gradually. Every condi¬ 
tion in civil society demands many trains of 
thought to be acquired, and made so familiar as 
to be present with the mind when needed. And 
for this reason man has a longer infancy and 
youth than creatures governed by instinct. Even 
our imagination serves us best in things in which 
it has been exercised most. Out of this fact grew 
that old saying, “Every man to his trade.” Our 


120 


CONCEPTION AND JUDGMENT. 


judgments are of two kinds : First, of things 
necessary. Second, of things contingent, or con¬ 
ditional. In the first—judgment is always easy, 
because it accompanies all first truths and axioms. 
This we call pure judgment. 

The second kind rests upon testimony which is 
grounded upon sense, by which we mean that a 
man judges of colors by his eyes and of sounds by 
his ears. The proposition that things are as 
our senses report them to us is conceded in all 
courts throughout the civilized world. So the 
evidence upon which we rest our judgments of 
the second kind is called “the evidence of sense.” 
When we say we saw so and so we do not add 
we judge it to be true, because it would be su¬ 
perfluous language. For the same reason we do 
not say of any self-evident thing, we judge it to 
be true. This is, nevertheless, a common er¬ 
ror in speech, which we often hear. “I saw it,” is 
enough without adding, “with my eyes.” There 
are mental operations which carry judgment in 
them. Speaking of such operations we do not 
express judgment, because it would be superflu¬ 
ous. Judgment is every determination of the 
mind concerning what is true or false. In a 
matter of common sense it has been said, every 
man is no less a competent judge than a math¬ 
ematician is in a mathematical demonstration. To 
suppose a general deviation from truth among 


•CONCEPTION AND JUDGMENT. 


121 


men in things self-evident, for which no cause 
can be assigned, is unreasonable. There is noth¬ 
ing more natural than for us to trust our reason¬ 
ing and judging powers, and nothing more un¬ 
natural than for us to believe them to be falla¬ 
cious, and if we are the greatest skeptics we 
can’t maintain such a belief for any great length 
of time. A man may walk upon his hands, but 
he will soon get upon his legs. A person of sense 
is a person of judgment. Good sense is good 
judgment; nonsense is the opposite of correct 
judgment. 

Our mental faculties fit us for the discovery of 
truth. They were not given to us to use in such 
a manner as to corrupt the mind with error. 
Wrong judgments are the result of a wrong use 
of our mental powers. The love of truth is nat¬ 
ural to man, and strong in every healthy, well 
disposed mind. But it is overborne by party 
zeal, by vanity, by the love of money, by the love 
of victory and by mental laziness. In a healthy 
state it requires the exercise of all its powers, in¬ 
dustry, fortitude, self-denial, candor, frankness, 
openness to conviction. 

There are plenty of men in the world who are 
so mean and abject that they prefer to live upon 
the charity of others. And there is a larger class 
who are mere beggars in regard to knowledge, 
who know nothing except that “which they know 


122 


CONCEPTION AND JUDGMENT. 


as natural brute beasts’’—experience is their only 
school. They never dig for truth nor for knowl¬ 
edge, and they are too lazy to think for them¬ 
selves or for others. Their understanding is, like 
their clothes, cut according to the fashion. 

In all matters of interest every man should be 
governed by his own final judgment, otherwise 
he does not act rationally. 

If a man claims infallibility in any department 
of interest to us,- we should determine his claims 
to such a pretense. If a man claims to be an em¬ 
bassador from heaven we should examine his cre¬ 
dentials. A mind full of prejudice is a diseased 
mind. Such men do not investigate, but they are 
continually “measuring themselves by them¬ 
selves and comparing themselves among them¬ 
selves. They are not wise.” 

Such diseased minds never advance any 
science or interest depending upon new discover¬ 
ies. They are fossils, not reformers. They are 
parasites, living upon that which other men pro¬ 
duce. A true man will study every subject with¬ 
out any idols governing him, without bias or 
prejudice. The understanding in its healthy 
state pays its homage to truth only. In diseased 
minds errors receive the homage that is due to 
truth. There are abnormal conditions of both 
body and mind which should be considered and 
avoided, but there are fatal cases in both depart- 


CONCEPTION AND JUDGMENT. 


123 


ments. The law governing in the department 
where I labor says, Let him that will be ignorant 
be ignorant still. In the doctors’ department all 
you can do in fatal cases is to let them die, be¬ 
cause you can do no more, neither can I. “Cast 
not your pearls before swine lest they trample 
them under foot and turn and rend you.” 


HYPOTHESES OR FACTS, WHICH? 


Webster says hypothesis is a supposition ; a 
thing taken for granted in order to draw a con¬ 
clusion, or inference, for proof of the point in 
question, an assumption for the sake of argu¬ 
ment ; a system or theory imagined or assumed 
to account for what is not understood. Sir Isaac 
Newton’s fame was the result of his being taught 
by Lord Bacon to despise hypotheses as the 
fictions of human fancy. He laid it down as a 
rule in searching into the reason of things, that 
no cause of natural things ought to be assigned 
but such as can be proven to exist. With this 
rule before him he proceeded to find out the laws 
by which phenomena were produced, such as heat 
and cold. It has been said that the building of 
hypotheses is an endless labor. Suppositions and 
hypotheses are the same. The peripatetics sup¬ 
posed sensible species to be sent forth by the ob¬ 
jects of sense. Malebranche, born at Paris in 
1638, supposed that we perceive the ideas of the 
Divine mind. Leibnitz, born at Leipsic in Ger¬ 
many in 1644, supposed monads and a pre-estab¬ 
lished harmony; and the monads, being of his 
124 


HYPOTHESES OR FACTS, WHICH? 125 

own creation, received from him the properties 
and powers which he chose to give them. The 
moderns have supposed images created upon the 
brain. 

This hypothetical reasoning reminds me of the 
Indian who supposed that the earth was sup¬ 
ported by a huge elephant standing upon the 
back of a great tortoise. It has been said that 
men only begin to have a true taste of philosophy 
when they have learned to hold hypotheses in 
contempt; and to consider them as the reveries 
of speculative minds. It has somehow come to 
pass that we have common sense, which enables 
us to know something at least about things by 
what we can discover, and by what our conscious¬ 
ness and reflection informs us concerning the op¬ 
erations of our own minds. All that we can de¬ 
duce from common self-evident instructions is 
true and legitimate in philosophy. A hypoth¬ 
esis which contradicts first truths may be, and 
is, distinguished from other errors by its being 
both false and absurd. The term absurd being 
especially appropriated to errors that offend com¬ 
mon sense. For our defense against such, nature 
has armed us with wit and ridicule. Hypothet¬ 
ical theories generally die away as soon as they 
lose their novelty, and especially when they are 
an insult to the common sense of mankind. 

The greatest support that the physical force 
theory of creation and of thought receives at this 


126 HYPOTHESES OR FACTS, WHICH? 

time is from men whose philosophy rests upon 
mere hypothesis, guess-work, suppositions that 
are in conflict with first truths and axioms. And 
a vast majority of its supporters are the irrelig¬ 
ious of our country. Dr. Darwin’s theory of the 
evolution of the higher species from the lower is 
as much opposed to facts as the Indian’s suppo¬ 
sition, and as great an insult to common sense. 

On the simple fact of memory there are no less 
than five assumptions taken for granted in order 
to maintain the idea of images upon the brain by 
the perception of external objects. First, the im¬ 
age made upon the brain remains after the object 
is removed, is permanent on the brain, but not 
on the organs of sense. Second, while the image 
remains on the brain the effect, memory, ceases. 
That is to say, we forget, and have need of recol¬ 
lection. 

It is a great absurdity to talk of memory and 
recollection as the effects of a picture upon the 
brain, and of the picture being permanent while 
the effect of memory ceases. And we are curious 
to know just how it is, that, when the permanent 
picture has lost the effect, memory, it can pro¬ 
duce recollection without memory. Can a man 
have recollection without memory? If it is re¬ 
ally necessary that images should be made upon 
the brain in order that we may have memory, and 
having memory may have knowledge, why should 
our knowledge vanish, seeing we have the cause 


HYPOTHESES OR FACTS, WHICH? 127 

of memory, the picture, permanently fixed upon 
the brain? Here is a logical contradiction; 
that is to say, when the image is on the brain it 
produces the effect—memory, and when it is on 
the brain it does not produce the effect—memory. 
This is a contradiction of the axiom, that a thing 
can not be and be at the same time. Does 
the cause exist without its effect? The theory 
says yes ! Does the cause produce its effect? The 
theory says yes. Then how is it that the cause 
is permanent and its effect is not? 

The third assumption is, that the same cause 
which at first produced the image, in recollection 
produces memory, an operation entirely different 
from sensation and perception. If conception 
and sensation produce memory, in recollection, 
what need is there of images upon the brain to 
produce memory ? 

The fourth assumption is, that the image does 
not produce its effect, memory, at all times. 

The fifth assumption is, that the brain stored 
with images creates images of things haying no 
existence at all. In this case I want to ask how 
it is that an object haying no existence at all 
made its impression upon the sensorial organs 
and through them upon the brain? Here the 
whole theory breaks down. It would be a great 
saying of mental labor, as well as physical, and 
much better, for us to turn all this guess-work 


128 HYPOTHESES OR FACTS, WHICH? 

out of our literature, relegating it to its proper 
place—the fictitious scenes of fancy pictures 
drawn by the air-castle builders of our country, 
and be content with the ultimate of mental phil¬ 
osophy, viz., mind, or consciousness, as the great 
trunk, with its simple, incomprehensible and 
ultimate branches, memory, recollection, reflec¬ 
tion and imagination. 

We have just as good reasons for resting our 
case in psychology with mind as any man has 
for resting his thoughts upon gravity with the 
word gravitation, and this we have all learned to 
do. Why not rest our thoughts in mental science 
upon mind with its powers ? In this science men 
have been building air castles for a thousand 
years, piling hypothesis upon hypothesis, and 
have never gotten away from mind, nor destroyed 
its contrast with matter, nor with any part of 
physical nature, nor accounted for any one of its 
faculties by physical laws, and they will not suc¬ 
ceed any better in a thousand years more. Men 
have supposed that external objects act upon the 
mind in perception, but the object perceived does 
not act upon the mind nor the mind upon it. The 
conception of a similitude between mind and 
body is the source of this error, it is the result 
of trying to transfer our mental operations to 
physical forces. Thought in the mind is con¬ 
ceived to be like motion in a body, and as a body 


HYPOTHESES OR FACTS, WHICH? 


129 


is put in motion, men readily think that mind 
is the recipient of some impulse from the object 
seen. I am in this room, and I am able to think 
of its Avails as much as I like, but I should ex¬ 
ceedingly regret to find them acting upon me, 
and I am sure that I shall not act upon them, for 
I and the owner might get into trouble. Reason¬ 
ings drawn from such analogies should never 
mislead us. Because bodies have the property of 
extension, and can be measured by feet and inches, 
we should never conclude that mind has the same 
properties, or that it may be thus measured. 
Why should we say that mind acts upon bodies 
by perceiving them, or that bodies act upon 
mind? 

There is in the nature of things no need of any 
such language. Why should we adopt it and 
cram psychology with physics? To say that I 
act upon a horse by looking at him is an abuse of 
language, because to perceive an object is one 
thing, and to act upon it is quite another; to 
think about it is one thing and to act upon it is 
another. In all such cases the mind’s action is 
in itself, and the effects of its action are in itself. 
This old materialistic assumption as our only 
source of knowledge strikes down our manhood. 
It is the atheistic psychology, in harmony with 
the idea that we are only thinking machines, 
governed by external surroundings, or environ- 
9 


130 


HYPOTHESES OR FACTS, WHICH? 


ments, creatures of circumstances only. Its in¬ 
ner subjective is simply the pictures of the ob¬ 
jective on the brain. A secular world of images on 
the brain? So they say : “One world at a time.” 
Their entire system of thought begins and ends 
in hypotheses. Guessing is an endless labor, it 
never finds rest. 

In all our schools we need men like Lord 
Bacon. It is enough to graduate in realities, 
facts and first truths. There should be no guess¬ 
ing, unless it be for pastime, and then it should 
be outside of school studies and school hours. 
There should be no speculation incorporated in 
any science, because it is not scientific. Science 
has been defined, certain knowledge, and a mere 
hypothesis is not certain knowledge. We should 
be satisfied with the ultimates in all departments, 
because we can go no farther. The man who 
tries to get beyond an ultimate is like a man 
upon the highest mountain peak exerting him¬ 
self to get higher. 

When we reach an incomprehensible we should 
never try to explain it, because we can not. If we 
could it would not be an incomprehensible. 
Neither should we try to simplify a simple, nor 
spiritualize a spiritual. Conception, perception, 
memory, imagination, recollection and reflection 
are all simple powers, faculties of the mind ad¬ 
mitting of no explanation, nor simplification ; re¬ 
quiring none. The science of psychology rests 


HYPOTHESES OR FACTS, WHICH? 131 

upon the unchangeable attributes of spiritual 
nature, and mind itself, to which these belong, is 
incomprehensible. Do you say these attributes 
are unknowable ? That is the wrong word ; they 
are incomprehensible, but not unknowable. We 
have conscious knowledge of these and many 
other incomprehensible things. Who compre¬ 
hends electricity, or gravitation, or mind? No 
man comprehends his own mental nature. We 
live in a mystery and of it form a part. We 
should rest our cases always in our ultimates, in 
what we know. If we go beyond this we are in 
the field of speculation among the air castle- 
builders of our country. 

I know that Mr. Huxley speaks of our religion 
as a religion of speculative beliefs, and the only 
excuse for his doing so is the fact that theolo¬ 
gians, like scientists, have gone beyond facts, be¬ 
yond Bible truth, and revelled in the fields of 
speculation. In our religion we have facts and 
first truths as well attested as the facts and first 
truths of the sciences. Here we should rest our 
religion. We know there is an eternal ever-liv¬ 
ing Intelligence. We know this by axiomatic 
evidences, for conclusions legitimately drawn 
from axioms always enter consciousness as 
knowledge. The law of biogenesis, that life onty 
produces life, leaves us with the fact of the exist¬ 
ence of an eternal life, that ever was and forever 
will be. And there is that old axiom that you 


132 HYPOTHESES OR FACTS, WHICH? 

can get no more out of a thing than there is in it 
which drives us to the same conclusion, and is 
equal to the saying: “Involution lies behind 
evolution.” And these first truths underlie our 
religion as well as our sciences. There never 
was, nor ever will be, an endless chain of de¬ 
pendent things, because there must be that which 
lies behind the first dependent link upon which 
it depended. And in that was involved all that 
was evolved. There is no guess work here, but 
demonstrative reasoning. We know that mind 
exists with all its faculties. We know that free 
will exists, and we know that sin is the trans¬ 
gression of law, and that men are sinners, and 
need to be reformed and saved from sin, and we 
know that he is righteous who does right. All 
these things we know. We also know that the 
power which gave life to dead matter, and has 
been changing dead matter into living organic 
nature through all the ages of organic existence, 
can give life to dead matter again. These truths, 
and the word of God, are our ultimates in our 
religion. There is no sense, nor science, nor re¬ 
ligion, in a whirlpool of guess work. The end of 
induction is first truths called ultimates, and the 
end of deduction is the circumference of all 
rational intelligence in both science and religion. 

First truths, intuitive truths, are always ex¬ 
pressed with verbs in the present tense, which 
are equal to the past, the present and the future, 


HYPOTHESES OR FACTS, WHICH? 133 

as when I say five is the half of ten; that is, it 
w^as, is and forever will be. Upon such truths 
science can have a permanent basis. Christianity 
has the same kind of a foundation, Christ is the 
same yesterday, to-day and forever. And the un¬ 
changeable “I am,” always was, is, and forever 
will be. Upon such truths only both science and 
religion can have a permanent foundation. A 
thing that was and is not will not answer the 
purpose ; neither will a thing that was, and is, 
and will not be ; because a science built upon 
such a foundation is like a house built upon the 
sand of the seashore, liable to be washed away at 
any time, and certainly will be. It is axiomatic 
that the building can’t stand when the founda¬ 
tion is gone. How will mere hypothesis do for 
a foundation? 

There is nothing in Darwinism but that which 
is built upon hypothesis, the guess that man, a 
being with rational nature, and a free will, with 
head, arms and legs, was evolved from a headless, 
boneless, limbless ascidian—a submarine creature 
giving little evidence of sensation. If man ever 
was in an ascidian then he was and was not at 
the same time, unless our definition of manhood 
was always wrong, and the distinction between 
person and thing a fiction. I suggest that person 
never was involved in thing, and therefore never 
was evolved out of thing, unless a man can be 
where he is not. How much of this theory lies 


134 HYPOTHESES OR PACTS, WHICH? 

outside of the possibility of verification? It is 
unverified and unverifiable. It is mere assump¬ 
tion hung upon the assumed possibilities of mill¬ 
ions of ages, upon ifs, and ifs, and ifs. 

Spencer says : “Evolution is a change from an 
indefinite homogeneity into a definite coherent 
heterogeneity through continuous differentia¬ 
tions and integrations.” Dr. Gregory cites the fol¬ 
lowing version of it, as given by some English 
critic : “Evolution is a change from a nohowish 
untalkaboutableness, all likeness, to a somehow- 
ish and in general talkaboutable not-at-all like¬ 
ness, by a continuous somethingelsefications and 
sticktogetherations.” And this is the science 
which explains everything. 

They tell us we may find the missing link be¬ 
tween man and the brute in Africa, but the gulf 
is so wide between the two that it would require 
a wonderful animal to bridge across. Thirty 
cubic inches is the largest gorilla brain ever dis¬ 
covered, and seventy cubic inches is the smallest 
human brain. So it would require a bridge of 
forty spans to cross that gulf; but they tell us 
that it required millions of ages to give us the 
present state of things : but those millions utterly 
failed to give us the forty spans, and there lies 
the gulf, unspanned. This is not all. It has been 
shown, allowing the heat has passed out of our 
earth uniformly as at present, that inside of a 
limited period in the past, comparatively speak- 


HYPOTHESES OR FACTS, WHICH? 135 

ing, our earth was so intensely hot as to be capa¬ 
ble of melting a mass of rock equal to itself in 
bulk. There are but two ways out of this diffi¬ 
culty, one is to utterly disregard the facts and 
axioms of science and common sense, and the 
other is to take Mr. Tyndall’s short-cut saying, 
“All were potentially in the fire cloud,” which 
Mr. Spencer says is unthinkable, and Spencer 
was right. Who can think of the germs of or¬ 
ganic life, either vegetable or animal, being in or 
produced by a fire cloud. 

Neither Dr. Darwin or his followers and ad¬ 
mirers can see any design in nature, because they 
have retired a personal God from His own home¬ 
stead, set Him to one side. But they can see 
a far-off man in a few old chip-flints and a few 
old stone axes. It is a law of mind to associate 
an adequate cause with every effect, and it is the 
business of science to catalogue effects, to class¬ 
ify them and note their relations as antecedents 
and consequents, and from the uniformity of 
effects determine natural laws. 

It is the business of philosophy to pass beyond 
effects and determine their causes ; to pass from 
immediate to remote causes, and from them to 
the ultimate and efficient cause. Philosophy, 
when it has reached this limit, introduces us to 
theology, for there is no adequate cause or ulti¬ 
mate cause save God, who is introduced to us in 
the first verse of the book of Genesis. And here 


136 HYPOTHESES OR FACTS, WHICH? 

theology begins. Professor Winchel has well 
said theology is the granary in which the fruit¬ 
age of science and philosophy is garnered. So 
where philosophy ends theology begins. 

In our theology the finest future world is ours, 
and the finest hope is ours ; and in this world the 
finest life is ours; and in human thought the 
finest companionship is ours. And, in fact, the 
finest death is ours, “for to live is Christ, and to 
die is gain.” 


INTUITION AND INNER MIND. 


, “Intuition’’ is defined by Webster in these 
words : A looking on, a sight or view, or percep¬ 
tion, but restricted to mental view, the act by 
which the mind perceives the truth of things im¬ 
mediately, or the moment they are presented with¬ 
out the intervention of other ideas, without reason¬ 
ing or deduction. The term is composed of in and 
tueor, which is defined, First, to perceive by the 
mind immediately without the intervention of 
argument or testimony. Exhibiting truth to the 
mind on bare inspection, as intuitive evidence. 
Second, received or obtained by intuition, or 
simple inspection, as intuitive judgment or 
knowledge. Third, seeing clearly, as an intui¬ 
tive view or vision. Fourth, having the power 
of discovering truth without reasoning. 

The adverb intuitively is defined by immediate 
perception without reasoning, as to perceive 
truth intuitively. All this would be impossible 
without the inner intelligence; without it we 
could not know anything in any way whatever ; 
without it we would not be men. This is the 
necessary basis of free will and responsibility; it 
137 


138 


INTUITION AND INNER MIND. 


is the I myself ; but the intuitions of the mind are 
those simple truths which are recognized by all 
rational intelligences. All knowledge, when an¬ 
alyzed, finds its basis in first or simple truths. 
No intuition, no tuition ; because you can’t edu¬ 
cate where there is nothing to educate, where 
there is no mind. 

This word intuition strikes down the material¬ 
istic philosophy of mind and contradicts the 
physical force theory of thought, that is, of think¬ 
ing only as the molecules of the brain are set in 
motion by impressions made upon the sensorial 
organs. Upon this theory intuition is a mis¬ 
nomer and mind a fiction. The term intuition is 
just equal to the presence of the inner mind. In¬ 
tuitive truths don’t require proof ; we know them 
to be true. They are matters of knowledge. 
They exist in consciousness as so many axioms. 
They are not the mind, but belong to the mind, 
and are never to be confounded with the mind. 
They prove the existence of the mind just as prop¬ 
erties prove the existence of their substantives. 
We know by intuition that an inner mind exists, 
called, in holy writ, the inner man, and the hid¬ 
den man of the heart, and also, in the Christian’s 
case, “a meek and quiet spirit,” which is the 
only intelligence. See First Cor., 2 :11 : “For 
what man knowetli the things of a man save the 
spirit of man which is in him.” We know as 




INTUITION AND INNER MIND. 


139 


certainly that the inner subjective exists, as we 
do that the outer objective exists. 

By intuition, or conscious knowledge, we know 
the substantive of thought. In the physical-force 
theory it is claimed that external objects make 
impressions upon our sensorial organs, and these 
produce some incomprehensible change in the 
nerve currents that pass over the nerves to the 
brain ; these, in their turn, make some incompre¬ 
hensible change in the brain, set the molecules 
in motion and they secrete thought. A French 
atheist said, in the days of Voltaire : “The brain 
secretes thought as the liver does bile.” Here is 
the place where all Christians and materialistic 
atheists and materialistic professors of religion 
part; here the road forks. All materialists say 
the impressions are made upon the brain, and all 
others say the impressions are made upon the 
mind or intelligent spirit, for mind and spirit are 
used interchangeably in the writings of the New 
Testament. See Romans 1 :9, and 7 :25. 

The brain forms the most largely developed 
portion of the nerves. This being true, why 
should we say impressions are made upon the 
sensorial organs and then carried by the nerves 
to the nerves? Here is tautology for you. And 
here the physical-force theory of thought breaks 
down. 

Men who study psychology as the second defi¬ 
nition of physiology are under no necessity of 


140 


INTUITION AND INNER MIND. 


stopping with the brain and dissecting knife. It 
is time that all Christian scientists were getting 
away from this materialistic break-down. Through 
the organs of sense impressions are made upon 
the mind. The mind is the thinker, and the 
thinker is the man. 

Are the molecules of the brain grinding away, 
secreting thought? Is the inner man, the hidden 
man of the heart, the mind, a fiction? The organs 
of sense are the outposts of the mind or spirit, 
which gives life to the entire system. Impres¬ 
sions are made upon the mind and it is stimu¬ 
lated to action. Sometimes external objects 
make no impressions upon it, because of its con¬ 
dition—its utter indifference to that which is 
heard, or seen, and this proves that mind governs 
in all these matters. 

The brain is related to the mind as the organ 
is to the musician. I once read of two boys who 
were always, up to a certain time, idiots. You 
will see an account of them in Winslow’s Physi¬ 
ology if you wish. One of them fell out of his 
father’s hay mow, lit upon his head on the barn 
floor, cracked his skull, and was rational ever 
after. The other got into a racket with a neigh¬ 
bor boy who struck him on the head, cracked his 
skull and ever after that he was rational. These 
facts prove that it is the condition of the brain, 
and not the brain itself, which has to do with 
the manifestations of the mind. The mind may 


INTUITION AND INNER MIND. 


141 


be, and often is, very active while the sensorial 
organs are all locked up in sleep. In this case it 
has its connection with the objective in thought 
only, for there is thought in dreams. All the 
changes in this whole affair of mental exertions 
are changes in the mind, changes in thought or 
mental action. 

• The idea of changes in sensorial organs, nerves 
and nerve currents, or in the molecules of the 
brain, when I am perceiving, is all naked as¬ 
sumption without one shadow of evidence to 
justify such a conclusion. When you endorse 
those assumptions you are tied up in the coils of 
the materialistic and atheistic philosophy, where 
you are without a basis for future existence, and 
without a basis for axioms to stand upon. When 
a man reaches the conclusion that life is a physi¬ 
cal effect, his cart is before his horse. And then 
when he stands beside a corpse and realizes that, 
in case man is all animal, identity is lost, what 
hope can he have of a future existence ? Having 
adopted these conclusions his common sense 
drives him into atheism, or to the idea that 
“death ends all.” 

Mr. Read says, in his work on the intellectual 
powers, “But whatever be the nature of those 
impressions made upon the organs, nerves and 
brain, we perceive nothing without them ; experi¬ 
ence informs us that this is so.” This statement 
is bare assumption which strikes down intuition, 


142 


INTUITION AND INNER MIND. 


strikes down manhood and conflicts with the fact 
of an inner mind, which is able to work upon 
already attained capital and increase its own 
stock of knowledge, even while in the prisoner’s 
cell, cut off from the objective world. Mr. Read 
immediately ruins his own statement by adding : 
“But we can not give a reason why it is so. In 
the constitution of man, perception, by fixed laws 
of nature, is connected with mere impressions.” 
Now listen, “but we can discover no necessary 
connection.” In these quotations we have, first, 
a contradiction ; second, a complete surrender of 
the physical-force theory. That the mind is 
stimulated to action, or thought, through the sen¬ 
sorial organs is a fact, and that often it is not is 
a fact. If we say we conceive nothing with¬ 
out them, we are mistaken. We see and hear a 
thousand things which make no impression upon 
us. 

It is mind that governs? There is conception, 
and mental perception, and intuition, a trinity by 
which we gain knowledge independent of ex¬ 
ternal objects, making impressions upon sensorial 
organs. There is a world of mental perceptions 
and conceptions, all lying inside, in the sub¬ 
jective. One man perceives that it will be to his 
advantage, financially, to tell a lie, and he does 
it. Another man conceives that it will be to his 
advantage in a political enterprise to misrepre¬ 
sent facts, and he does it. Another man con- 


INTUITION AND INNER MIND. 


143 


cc ives that it is to his personal interest to set up 
a saloon, and he does it. Another conceives that 
some man who has opposed his intentions should 
be shot, and he lays in ambush and shoots him. 
In fact, about two-thirds of moral and immoral 
character, as well as political, is the result of 
mental conceptions and perceptions, which im¬ 
pressions from the objective has nothing to do 
with. 

Is it true when a man’s sensorial organs are 
locked up, and he is thinking in dreams that 
which never was true and never will be true, that 
his thoughts are the result of impressions made 
by external objects upon his sensorial organs? 
By the way, when a man is thinking in his 
sleep there is either an internal thinker who 
can think without those impressions upon his 
sensorial organs, or otherwise the sensorial organ 
theory of thought by impressions from external 
organs is false, because in sleep the gateway is 
closed. The idea that there is a change, of ne¬ 
cessity, in sensorial organs, nerves, and brain in 
order to thought is a fancy picture of the human 
imagination opposed to psychological facts. What 
change takes place in the optic nerve, or in its 
current, when I turn my eyes from white to blue, 
or from blue to red? Will any man tell me? It 
never has been done. Will any man tell me 
how ideas are differentiated by changes in the 
nerve currents, or in their fibers? 


144 


INTUITION AND INNER MIND. 


A man’s ideas are differentiated in harmony 
with mental conditions, politically, morally and 
religiously. Are they not? Men have been won¬ 
derfully exercised by the belief of a lie. - If old 
Jacob had not believed the lie when he saw 
Joseph’s coat stained with blood- he might not 
have given himself so much trouble. Do you say 
the bloody coat made him believe the lie—made 
him—do you say? If he had been smart as some 
Yankees he might have held an investigation and 
determined whether the blood was human blood. 
I concede that it was very natural for him to be 
deceived by the bloody coat, but he came to his 
conclusion very hastily. One would think that 
the manifest credulity of secularists, sceptics and 
atheists would have destroyed that old idea that 
belief is necessitated. If men were compelled to 
believe, the Nazarene would never have said, unbe¬ 
lief is sin. Jacob made up his mind very hastily ; 
his mental condition had a vast deal to do with 
it, because his affections were very strongly set 
upon Joseph. 

As a general rule men’s mental conditions have 
a very great deal to do with their beliefs. If 
some expert had convinced Jacob that the blood 
on that coat was not human blood it would have 
given Jacob great relief. We are also wonder¬ 
fully exercised by the belief of the truth. Emo¬ 
tions, also, are in harmony with mental conditions. 
Mind governs. It is the mind that makes the 


INTUITION AND INNER MIND. 


145 


man. Even Voltaire said : “I do not get my 
thoughts from external surroundings, for they 
have none to give.” The thinker dwells within. 
In all our conversations and language we should 
substitute mind for brain. When you say an 
impression was made, remember that impressions 
are made upon mind, and not upon matter. If 
you mean a physical impression I shall not ob¬ 
ject, but I shall always advocate that use of 
words which is strictly in harmony with truth in 
psychology. Impressions upon physical nature 
through mental conditions are purely sympa¬ 
thetic. 

An old poet said : 

“That mind and body sympathize, ’tis plain. 

Such is the union nature ties. 

But then as often too they disagree, •• 

Which proves the soul’s superior progeny. 

Passion riots, reason then contends, 

And on the conquest every bliss depends.” 

The spirit’s personality is evinced by its ability 
to conceive of things that never did exist, such 
as the centaur, a thing half horse, and half 
man. Is it only an image? How did it get 
there without its external object? You say it is 
only a complex idea, having its images already 
on the brain? But what is it that has the power 
to cut images into pieces and combine them in 
unknown forms? You have no such objects be- 
10 


146 


INTUITION AND INNER MIND. 


fore the camera. 0, it is only imagination, that 
is all there is of it. So say I, image on the brain 
is a humbug, it is only a fancy picture created 
by no objective, but by the imagination. Image 
is but another name for imagination, which is a 
mental attribute. 

In all languages, in analogical reasoning, men 
use symbols. On this very account it happens 
that what one man calls a conception, which is 
the right name, another man calls an image, and 
transfers it from mind to brain. The transfer is 
where all the error lies. We speak of weighing 
motives and arguments, but why should we liter- 
alize the symbol by claiming its picture upon the 
brain ? The atheistic philosophy of thought trans¬ 
fers the symbols of analogical reasoning from 
the mind to the brain, from their true location, 
which is imagination. This is an abuse of an¬ 
alogical reasoning, a change of the basis of sym¬ 
bols from the imagination to the brain. There 
is no need of any intelligent man being misled 
by analogical symbols employed to designate a 
conception. There is no more reason to believe 
that there are literal images upon the brain than 
there is to believe that literal scales, thrashing 
machines and railroads are there. 

A noted writer has said : “We know of nothing 
that is in the mind but consciousness, and we are 
conscious of nothing but various modes of think- 


INTUITION AND INNER MIND. 


147 


ing, such as understanding, reflecting, willing, 
passion, doing and suffering.” 

I may have conceptions of objects which really 
exist, but are hundreds of miles away, and I have 
no reason to think that they ever acted upon me, 
nor I upon them. Then I can think of the first 
and last years of the Jewish age, or upon the first 
and last of any other series. To account for the 
power of conception by images in the brain sub¬ 
jects us to serious difficulties. 

First. When I perceive a horse I know that it 
is not an image of a horse that I perceive, but the 
animal itself. Can’t I have the reality in mind 
instead of an image on the brain? Do I not know 
the difference between a horse and his picture? 

Second. It involves the absurd idea that there 
must be a faculty of the brain which perceives 
images on the brain. 

Third. That seeing such images upon the 
brain causes conceptions of things far away, and 
also conceptions of things which never had an 
existence. If you ask me what is the idea of a 
square, I do not say, it is an image, but that it 
is a square, having four right angles, and that 
its sides are equal; so the idea in mind is a square 
—a species of thought, not an image on the brain. 
I have conscious knowledge that it is really a 
square that I perceive. One writer has said : 
“We are all blockheads in some things.” This 
may be true, but why should we, in our great 


148 


INTUITION AND INNER MIND. 


effort to get away from blockheads, run into 
pictureheads? 

The term man, according to Mueller and Graff, 
is derived from a term that means to think ; so no 
think, no man, is a first truth. Intuitions are 
called primitive beliefs by some scientists, where¬ 
as they should be called, as they often are, 
transcendental truths, supereminent, surpassing 
all other truths, because self-evident matters of 
conscious knowledge. Observation does not give 
them to us, and experience does not modify them. 
Even savages know them intuitively. They need 
no proof, no argument, to cause them to be re¬ 
spected, and no amount of reasoning can destroy 
them. Let us mention a few of them. Involu¬ 
tion lies behind evolution. You can’t get more 
out of a thing than there is in it. 

No antecedent life, no life. 

Life only produces life. 

No thinker, no thought. 

No thinker, no man. 

To get more out of a thing than there is in it 
is the same as to create something of nothing. 
Every circumference has a center. You can’t 
find a thing where it is not. 

You can’t find a man where there is no man. 

Where there is no life there can be no dying. 

Where there is no law there is no transgression. 

No lie is of the truth. 

No truth is a lie. 


INTUITION AND INNER MIND. 


149 


Intuition lies behind tuition. 

No intuition, no tuition. 

Intuitions are inherent in mental nature. I 
know that I desire. I know that I know. I know 
that I love. I know that I hate. I know that I 
think. I know that I believe. All these verbs 
have their substantive in the I. In every act of 
consciousness there is the I and the not I. Con¬ 
sciousness is double. Consciousness of thinking, 
and consciousness of that about which I am think¬ 
ing. To doubt the fact of consciousness is to 
doubt our own existence. 

Conclusion : Any theory, science, so-called, or 
philosophy, or religion, or system, which con¬ 
tradicts first truths, is unreasonable to the same 
extent, and unworthy of credence. 

Our secularists, as well as others, are always 
calling for facts, and men who do this should 
recognize facts in a practical way. They should 
ever be mindful of the contrast between fleshly af¬ 
fections and sensibilities, and mental and spirit¬ 
ual principles and attributes. Governed by their 
materialistic philosophy and fleshly sensibilities, 
carried in thought away beyond their natural 
and legal relations, they are continually measur¬ 
ing the future spiritual being by the fleshly of the 
present. They profess to anticipate a miserable 
future existence, provided any part of the human 
family should, in going to their “own place,” 
miss the place of pure spirits. Then they will be 


150 


INTUITION AND INNER MIND. 


much more sensitive than now, and have much 
more sympathy. 

There is much suffering in this world, and 
much poverty. Do they not sleep well, and 
board well; get all they can in an honorable way, 
and keep it for their little constellation or family? 
They are sensitive enough to vote to legalize the 
saloons of their country, which destroy one hun¬ 
dred thousand annually, in both soul and body. 
Verily it would turn them into hell if they should, 
in the great hereafter, learn that a small portion 
of the millions upon millions should miss 
heaven. 

Do they think, “How many feel, this very 
moment, death with all the sad variety of pain? 
How many sink in the devouring flood or more 
devouring flame? How many bleed, by shameful 
variance between man and man? How many 
pine in want and dungeon’s gloom, shut from 
common air, and common use of their limbs? 
How many drink the cup of baleful grief, or eat 
the bitter bread of misery, sore pierced by wintry 
winds? How many shrink into the sordid hut 
of cheerless poverty? How many shake with all 
the fiercer tortures of the mind, unbounded pas¬ 
sion, madness, guilt, remorse ; whence, tumbled 
headlong from the height of life, they furnish 
matter for the tragic muse?” Do they not? Yes ! 
And yet there be those who are unmoved by all 


INTUITION AND INNER MIND. 


151 


there is of woe and misery, who fancy that in 
case any spirit misses heaven, in the great here- 
after, when the law of affinity will take every 
spirit to its own place, they will be very miser¬ 
able ; they are so sensitive, so sympathetic. And, 
if all this be true, they will not be then what 
they are just now—will they? 


MIND OR SOUL, ITS FACULTIES AND 
VALUE. 


Psychology is from psuche and logos ; psuche, 
soul, and logos , discourse. A discourse upon men¬ 
tal science is a discourse upon psychology. Con¬ 
sciousness is the last result of mental analysis, 
an ultimate principle, a primary datum of intel¬ 
ligence, sometimes called an a priori principle, 
that is, a first cause ; sometimes a transcendental 
condition of thought; all of which simply means, 
no consciousness, no thought. It lies at the root 
of all experience, and can not be resolved into 
any higher principle. It gives us the contrast 
between mind knowing and matter known. One 
is the existence of physical nature ; the other is 
the existence of incorporeal or spiritual nature. 
Consciousness is a simple fact of intelligence ; 
another name for I myself. In one word, the 
fact of consciousness, as a general fact, gives the 
distinction of the I and not I belonging to con¬ 
sciousness as the general condition of the mind. 

There are three rules to be remembered when 
we undertake to give an analysis of conscious¬ 
ness : First. That no fact be assumed as a fact of 
consciousness unless it be an ultimate which can 
(152) 



MIND OR SOUL, ITS FACULTIES AND VALUE. 153 

not be simplified, such as I know that I know, 
I know that I love, I know that I hate, I know 
that I desire, I know that I hope, I know that I 
believe. 

Second rule. While every mental phenome¬ 
non, such as love, may be called a fact of con¬ 
sciousness, we must distinguish consciousness 
from all such facts. They may or may not exist, 
and are therefore called modifications of con¬ 
sciousness, being certain conditions of the mind, 
branches of which consciousness is the trunk. 

Third rule. That we must distinguish the 
special and derivative phenomena of mind from 
the primary and universal. For example, in the 
act of perception, which belongs to the particular 
faculty of perceiving, I distinguish between the 
thing perceived and the faculty of perception ; 
between the thing remembered and- the faculty 
of memory; between the thing believed and the 
faculty of believing ; between the thing hoped for 
and the faculty of hoping; between the thing 
determined and the faculty which determines. 
The mind is the substantive of all these particu¬ 
lar facts, while the faculties themselves are uni¬ 
versal. Consciousness is that which takes notice 
of all particular facts as soon as they transpire, 
and all these are derivative phenomena of mind, 
or consciousness, which is the I myself, for per¬ 
ceiving is only the act of a perceiver, and hating 
is only the act of one who hates, and so on. 


154 MIND OR SOUL, ITS FACULTIES AND VALUE. 

Consciousness is a general universal fact, be¬ 
cause it is common to all men, and common to 
all the primary universal faculties, or powers of 
action. This general fact of consciousness is the 
one universal nominative to all those particular 
facts in which men differ so much ; one hoping 
for one thing and another hoping for another ; 
one believing one thing and another believing 
something else ; one loving one thing and another 
something else. In the derivative facts of con¬ 
sciousness men differ, while the particular uni¬ 
versal facts of consciousness are the same always 
and everywhere. The derivative facts which I 
have mentioned, with all other derived facts which 
make up human character, are to be known as 
modifications of consciousness or mind, condi¬ 
tions of my being. Why? I answer, because I 
can not believe without knowing that I believe, 
nor hate without knowing that I hate, nor hope 
without knowing that I hope, and so on through 
all the particulars known in human experience. 
The ability to do each particular thing I call a 
primary, universal, particular faculty to do this 
or that. 

Consciousness is the soul, spirit or mind in 
possession of a knowledge of its own modifica¬ 
tions, or taking notice of its own mental opera¬ 
tions. The first rule in the analysis is that we 
always remember that all facts of consciousness 
are ultimate and simple. Here is the meaning 


MIND OR SOUL, ITS FACULTIES AND VALUE. 155 

of both terms : I know that I know ; I know that 
I believe ; I know that I hope ; I know that I love ; 
I know that I hate ; I know that I desire ; I know 
that I perceive ; I know that I conceive. These 
are simple facts and ultimate, because I have ex¬ 
pressed, in the terms themselves, all that any 
man can express of them. Consciousness, as the 
general universal fact, is the I myself. Who is 
this I? And what of him? 

The word “psychology” contains the answer ; it 
is the soul as distinguished from the body, and 
from all mere animal souls. It is the rational, in¬ 
telligent soul known as the spirit of man ; a soul 
which a man can not kill, which embodies all the 
mental faculties, with all their powers and capac¬ 
ities. The science of psychology is the summa¬ 
tion, or sum total, of all the facts of mind, which 
mark the condition of the I. Consciousness is 
an incomprehensible, simple, universal fact. 
You can not logically define it. If you could it 
would cease to be incomprehensible. Neither can 
you simplify it, nor any other simple. All we 
can do is to rest our case in the term itself. We 
use it as a synonym of I, of spirit, and of mind, 
because it is so used in our language, and in the 
science of psychology. These terms are ultimate, 
because you can’t get behind them, nor make 
* any more out of them than they express. In 
psychology they all mean the same. In the Bi¬ 
ble the term “soul” is generally used in the sense 


156 MIND OR SOUL, ITS FACULTIES AND VALUE. 

of person, or animal life, which is distinguished 
from the spirit, which only knows the things of 
the man to whom it belongs. So we read of 
souls dying, famishing, perishing, and such like. 
But even in the Bible, as in all languages the 
world over, we have the term used as it is in psy¬ 
chology, to designate the living spirit which‘ a 
man can not kill, but this is the exception in 
Biblical literature. 

It is also worthy of remark that the term “heart’ ’ 
is also used in a double sense. We are very 
familiar with its physical currency, but it has 
been transferred to the incorporeal plane of 
thought, and used in the sense of spirit, or mind, 
when it is said of our adorning, “Let it be the 
hidden man of the heart in that which is not cor¬ 
ruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet 
spirit, which in the sight of God is of great price 
and also, when it is said : “With the heart, man 
believeth unto righteousness;” and when it is 
said : “Out of the abundance of the heart the 
mouth speaks;” and when David said: “Your 
heart shall live forever.” We need not multiply 
words upon the fact that heart and mind and 
soul are used in holy writ to designate one and 
the same—nor to further establish the idea of 
the terms “soul” and “heart” being used with 
a double meaning. This double use of words is * 
based upon the fact of the existence of the cor¬ 
poreal—the perishing, and the incorporeal, the 


MIND OR SOUL, ITS FACULTIES AND VALUE. 157 

not perishing. We have the outward man perish¬ 
ing in contrast with the inward man, which “is 
renewed day by day, renewed in knowledge after 
the image of Him that created him in righteous¬ 
ness and true holiness.” 

In Zechariah 12:2, it is said of the Creator : 
“It is He that stretcheth forth the heavens and 
layeth the foundations of the earth, and formeth 
the spirit of man within him.” The heart that 
David said, shall live forever, and the hidden 
man of the heart, the meek and quiet spirit, and 
the soul that the Savior said a man could not 
kill, all mean the incorporeal J, myself. The 
soul which the master gives us to understand is 
of more value than the whole world. The spirit 
of man only knows the things of the man ; the 
spirit without which the body is dead, being 
alone ; the spirit, the master said, was willing 
while the flesh was weak ; the soul which came 
again into the body of the Shunammite woman’s 
son when he was restored to life ; the spirit of life 
from God, which entered into the dead bodies 
which John saw when they rose and stood upon 
their feet .—Revelations 11:11. 

Psychology and physiology meet in the phys¬ 
ical system upon the plane of the nerves. It is a 
wonderful union involving an equally wonderful 
contrast. The voluntary nerves do not move as 
do the involuntary. The ultimate in the analy¬ 
sis of the voluntary nerves is the will, or mind’s 


158 MIND OR SOUL, ITS FACULTIES AND VALUE. 

action, the willing spirit, which is the basis of 
my moral manhood, the basis of my free-will and 
of my responsibilities. The voluntary nerves are 
the w r ires over which my willing spirit exerts its 
powers at the mind’s bidding. I will, and im¬ 
mediately move. The voluntary nerves are a 
kingdom over which mind is king, while over 
the involuntary, physical laws reign, and the re¬ 
sult is perpetual action ; the simple presence of 
the spirit in the body is all that is necessary here. 
Will does not govern here ; if it did, I could die at 
will. I can move and work at will, but I can’t 
die at will, because the involuntary nerves are 
not under the control of my will. They connect 
with my stomach that digests, with the lungs that 
breathe, with the liver that secretes bile, and with 
the kidneys that carry impurities from the sys¬ 
tem ; these do all their work whether I will or 
not. It is remarkable that the involuntary nerves 
are connected with the cerebellum, while the vol¬ 
untary are connected with the cerebrum. 

The dividing line between the reign of physical 
laws and a free responsible agency is seen in the 
contrast between the voluntary and involuntary 
nerves. This contrast contradicts all the theories 
of necessity concerning moral, political and re¬ 
ligious action. So does the science of psychology, 
for believing is the act of a believer, and loving 
is the act of a lover. These are simple and ulti¬ 
mate facts of consciousness. Some men have 



MIND OR'SOUL, ITS FACULTIES AND VALUE. 159 

denied their religion to save their lives, while 
others have, in the exercise of their free will, suf¬ 
fered martyrdom in the fields of political, moral 
and religious action. When a man begins to ad¬ 
vocate the doctrine of necessity in morals, politics 
or religion, call his attention to the voluntary 
nerves, the kingdom of the will. This alone 
should be sufficient to silence any intelligent ad¬ 
vocate of that old, unscientific, absurd theory of 
fatalism. The only definition of psychology, 
given by Webster, is the second definition of 
physiology, which has to do with both voluntary 
and involuntary nerves. Both sets are the wires 
over which all the music of human life is played. 

But we must remember that freedom has its 
limits, because there are natural and moral impos¬ 
sibilities. The moral are always contingent, that 
is, conditional, which is as much as to say, I can 
not serve God and Mammon at the same time. I 
can take my choice and do either, as I choose. 
I can’t be a Christian and a sinner at the same 
time. The moral can not means no more than 
this on the moral plane. 

No sensible man will call up the power of 
either God or man in connection with absolute or 
natural impossibilities. No power in the uni¬ 
verse has anything to do with natural impossi¬ 
bilities. The possible is the limit of power, 
whether it be human or divine. I was once in a 
discussion with a materialist, near Laketon, in 


160 MIND OR SOUL, ITS FACULTIES AND VALUE. 

Wabash county, Indiana, upon the subject of our 
condition after the death of the body. My op¬ 
ponent defined death by saying: “It is the re¬ 
verse of the creative act; it places man where 
Adam was before the Lord made him.” For the 
sake of the argument I admitted his definition, 
and said to him : “When we, with all the rest of 
mankind, are where Adam was before the Lord 
made him, there will not be a man, woman nor 
child for heaven, earth nor hades. The Lord 
himself could not find one in three weeks with a 
candle.” I said : “I do not doubt the power of 
the Infinite One to create a man; but,” said I, 
“when there was not a man to till the ground 
the Lord did not go about to find one, but created 
one. And, according to your definition of death, 
when the Lord creates again they will not be the 
same, but another set of fellows.” He cried 
over this, and quit the discussion. It was over. 

An old writer said: “It is the mind that 
makes the man,” and John said, “Try the spirits, 
for many false teachers are gone out into the 
world.” Man is a spirit served by an organism, 
which is his medium of connection with the ob¬ 
jective world. Death takes down this medium. 
Organizations only perish. A spiritual body will 
heal the breach that death has made, and man, 
as a spirit, will be once more gloriously con¬ 
nected by an imperishable medium with all the 
glories of the heavenly Father’s great house, the 


MIND OR SOUL, ITS FACULTIES AND VALUE. 161 

law of affinity taking care of each and every 
spirit, and each going to his own place, and be¬ 
ing what it made itself as a spirit. “Every man 
in his own order.” 

I regard the brain, with its great ganglea lying 
at its base, as the seat or throne of the mind or 
spirit, and the nervo-vital fluid, or living fluid, as 
the investient of the nerves. The spirit’s home is 
the body, and its medium of connection with the 
body is nervo-vital fluid, from which we have 
the beautiful figure, “water of life.” Is there 
nothing incorporeal about the nervo-vital fluid? 
Is there, as Dr. Dodd says, electricity used by 
the spirit in carrying on the circulation of the 
blood, and contracting muscles, and carrying on 
perpetual action in the involuntary nerves, and 
motion in the voluntary at will ? Is the nervo- 
vital fluid secreted by the brain? Is' it the home 
of the spirit? Is it the investient of the entire 
nerve manikin? 

Es there nothing incorporeal connected with 
the bioplasts, those liquid globules located more 
numerously where the greatest draft is made 
upon the physical system? And why is it that, 
in the living subject, they are always in motion? 
Answer : The spirit of life is in them. This is 
the only scientific and Christian solution. Here 
again we rest the case in the simple and ultimate 
term life, which can not be simplified, because it 
11 


162 MIND OR SOUL, ITS FACULTIES AND VALUE. 

is a simple, nor logically defined, because it is an 
incomprehensible. If I live in thought at this 
point, in a wilderness of darkness, the advocates 
of the physical-force theory live a thousand miles 
further in the same wilderness. Incorporeal or 
spiritual nature is the only nature possessing 
inherent living power and motion. These are its 
two primary efficients, inseparably connected in 
every spirit. 

Inertia is a property of matter. All motion is 
either relative or absolute. If a desk ever moves, 
the motion will be related to something that moves 
it, and no other dead matter will move it, unless 
something moves this other dead matter against it, 
and so on until you reach a vital force. No life, no 
action, is axiomatic ; therefore life was before mo¬ 
tion in matter began to be. In our bodies we 
had, first of all, life, then motion. And it is a 
remarkable fact that the life was in the sperm-a- 
to-zoa. I systematize thus : First, life ; second, 
motion ; third, will, or the action of the mind, 
free-will. I am obliged to distinguish between 
the nervo-vital fluid and the spirit, which wills, 
and knows, and testifies, by the simple fact that 
when the great cords, essential to the movement 
of the lower limbs, are dried up just above the 
hips, by the application of a fly-blister, or by any 
other cause, there will be no circulation over 
those cords, and, consequently, no moving of 
those limbs, no assimilation. The process of 


MIND OR SOUL, ITS FACULTIES AND VALUE. 163 

building or making muscle in those limbs will 
cease, and they will shrink away and become 
very small, which proves that the nervo-vital 
fluid is the means by which the spirit changes 
dead matter, taken into the stomach, into living 
organic nature, duplicating the creative act. 
Above the injury the body will be in its normal 
healthy condition. I have known two such cases 
in my time, which were perfect examples of this 
condition. They were left with at least one con¬ 
solation, and that was that those cruel fly-blisters 
could not affect anything except the physical or¬ 
ganization. The hidden man of the heart, the 
meek and quiet spirit, is above the fly-blistering 
operations of men. 


MIND, SOUL, SPIRIT, INTELLECT AND 
EMOTIONS. 


“Mind, from man, to think ; the intellectual or 
intelligent power ; the understanding ; the power 
that conceives, judges or reasons ; a manifesta¬ 
tion of intelligence. When the mind, says Locke, 
turns its view inward upon itself, thinking is 
the first idea that occurs ; wherein it observes a 
great variety of modifications, from which it 
frames to itself distinct ideas. Thus the percep¬ 
tion, annexed to any impression on the body, by 
an external object, is called sensation ; when an 
idea recurs, without the presence of the object, 
it is called remembrance ; when sought after by 
the mind and again brought into view, it is called 
recollection ; when ideas are taken notice of, and 
retained in memory, it is attention ; when the 
mind fixes its view on any one idea, and considers 
it on all sides, it is called study. The general term 
mind also means intellectual capacity ; liking; 
choice ; inclination ; affection ; will; desire ; in¬ 
tention ; purpose; design; thoughts; senti¬ 
ments ; opinion ; memory ; remembrance ; as to 
call to mind ; to bear in mind ; to fix the mind 
on; to attend to; to fix the thoughts on; to 
( 164 ) 




MIND, SOUL, SPIRIT, INTELLECT, EMOTIONS. 165 

notice; to mark; to observe; to heed; to re¬ 
gard ; to attend to with submission ; to intend ; 
to mean ; to bear in mind ; to incline ; to be dis¬ 
posed.” The term mind is used with all or any 
of these meanings; the essential whole being 
put for any one of its parts, because mind is es¬ 
sential to any one of these definitions. 

The term soul is defined, the thinking, spiritual, 
rational and imperishable principle in man which 
distinguishes him from the brute creation ; that 
part of man which enables him to think and 
reason, and which renders him a subject of moral 
government; sometimes the so-called animal 
soul; or in other words, the seat of vital function ; 
the sensitive affections, exclusive of the voluntary 
and rational powers, in distinction from the higher 
nature or spirit of man. Occasionally it is put for 
the seat of emotions and feelings as distinguished 
from intellect, and sometimes again it is put for 
the intellect or understanding, pure and simple, 
in distinction from feeling ; as the imperishability 
of the soul; hence, the vital principle, spirit. 
Again it is put for essence, which is the animat¬ 
ing power or part, as brevity is the soul of wit; 
hence, the inspirer, leader or ruling spirit of any 
action, enterprise or undertaking, as an able 
statesman, is the soul of his party. It is used in 
the sense of courage, fire, ardor, energy, fervor, 
or grandeur of mind ; any excellent or sublime 


166 MIND, SOUL, SPIRIT, INTELLECT, EMOTIONS. 

manifestation of the emotional or moral nature 
as the will to do, the soul to dare.— Scott. 

“A human being ; a person ; an individual; as 
she had three hundred souls on board when she 
was lost. A pure or disembodied spirit. ‘Every 
soul in heaven shall bend the knee.’ ”— Milton. 

“The word soul is frequently used as a familiar 
designation for person, usually associated with 
some term used adjectively, as I pity the poor 
soul, or he was a good soul. It is also used 
largely in the formation of compounds, as soul¬ 
consuming, soul-distracting, soul-liardening, soul- 
reviving. Soulless —Without a soul, or lacking 
greatness or nobleness of mind ; mean, craven, 
abject, spiritless, as a soulless villain.” 

The term spirit is also used with great latitude. 
It is thus defined : “ Life itself ; an incorporeal, 

intelligent substance, or being; vital or active 
principle ; essence, force or energy, as distinct 
from matter ; life or living substance, considered 
apart from material or corporeal existence. The 
soul of man as distinguished from the body 
wherein it dwells.” “If we exclude space,” 
says Watts, “there will remain in the world but 
matter and mind, or body and spirit.” “The 
spirit shall return unto God who gave it.”— Eccle. 
12:7: It is also used in the same manner as 
mind and soul to designate any and every thing 
to which it is essential.” “In philosophy the 
fluid which is supposed to circulate through the 


MIND, SOUL, SPIRIT, INTELLECT, EMOTIONS. 167 

nerves, and which has been regarded as the agent 
of sensation and motion, and as analogous in its 
effects and properties to electricity; the nervous 
fluid or principle.”— Dunglinson. 

Mind, soul and spirit are used in our language 
and defined in such a manner as to show that 
they are a trinity in unity, synonymous in their 
general currency in every-day speech, and as 
general terms used to designate everything to 
which they are essential, each term, being used 
for its every part or quality. This all grows 
out of the axiom, that you can’t separate a thing 
from its properties, or qualities, or attributes. 
It is a law of language that in defining words 
we must always keep inside the attributes, or 
qualities, of the things themselves. I must tell 
you that there are three questions to be answered 
in the study of any one thing : 

First. What is it? 

Second. What are its relations? 

Third. What are its uses? When these ques¬ 
tions are answered all is told. The figure of 
speech that carries the essential whole, as the 
name of each and every part, of any general 
term or whole, is called the synecdoche. The 
terms mind, soul, and spirit have many uses, or, 
in other words, they are parent terms having many 
children, and the science of pyschology is known 
in its entirety inside of these families. These in¬ 
clude the intellect, which is closely allied to 


168 MIND, SOUL, SPIRIT, INTELLECT, EMOTIONS. 

mind, to soul, to spirit, and is also a parent 
term having many definite uses, and is as incom¬ 
prehensible as the others. We can certainly 
know the uses we make of the words, but this is 
all. We never will be able, at least in this state of 
being, to comprehend such incomprehensibles, 
but we can rest our case in the terms and their 
uses. Intellect is from the Latin, intellectus , 
which is composed of or from intelligo—inter , and 
lego , to select, to catch with the eye; lego, is to 
read. 

“Intellect is that faculty of the soul or mind 
which perceives, or understands, or which re¬ 
ceives, or comprehends the ideas communicated 
to it by the senses, or by perception, or by 
other means. It is the faculty of thinking ; the 
understanding ; the power of discovering ; act or 
exercise of knowing; discernment; intellectual 
capacity ; skill or knowledge ; the pure intellect; 
faculty of exercising the higher functions of the 
understanding ; a person of intelligence ; a spirit¬ 
ual being ; usually applied to pure spirits.” “For 
what man knoweth the things of a man, but the 
spirit of man which is in him.”— 1st Cor. 2:11. 

The term emotion is defined, to move ; a mov¬ 
ing away; a stirring or rousing up ; a moving of 
the mind ; mental excitement; any agitation of 
the mind or excitement of the sensibilities ; feel¬ 
ing ; perturbation ; tremor. In philosophy, a state 
of feeling awakened through the medium of the 


MIND, SOUL, SPIRIT, INTELLECT, EMOTIONS. 169 

intellect, and manifesting itself by some sensible 
effect on the body. An emotion differs from a 
sensation in not springing directly from an affec¬ 
tion of the body. 

And according to Lord Karnes an emotion dif¬ 
fers from a passion in this, that it passes away 
without exciting any desire, whereas a passion 
is accompanied with a desire. Emotions, regarded 
in themselves, can hardly be called springs of ac¬ 
tion. They tend rather to quiescence and con¬ 
templation, fixing the attention on the objects or 
occurrences which excited them, but they com¬ 
bine with springs of action, and give them a char¬ 
acter and a coloring. 

Mr. Bain, in his work upon mind and body, 
springs several very important questions, among 
which we find the following, with answers : If 
all mental facts are at the same time physical 
facts, some will ask what is the meaning of a 
proper mental fact? Second. Is there any differ¬ 
ence at all between menta] agents and physical 
agents ? Answer : There is a very broad differ¬ 
ence, which may be easily illustrated. When 
any one is pleased, stimulated, cheered, by food 
or bracing air, we call the influence physical, and 
through these upon the nerves, by a chain of 
sequence, purely physical. But when one is 
cheered by good news, by a pleasing spectacle, 
or by a stroke of success, the influence is mental 
sensation ; thought and consciousness are part of 


170 MIND, SOUL, SPIKIT, INTELLECT, EMOTIONS. 

the chain, although these can not be sustained 
without their physical basis. 

The proper physical fact is a single, one-sided, 
objective fact. The mental fact is a two-sided 
fact, one of its sides being a train of feelings, 
thoughts or other subjective elements. We do 
not fully represent the mental fact unless we 
take account of both sides. The so-called men¬ 
tal influences, cheerful news, a fine poem and 
the rest, can not operate except on a frame phys¬ 
ically prepared to respond to the stimulation. 
While admitting that there is something unique, 
if not remarkable, in the close incorporation of 
the two extreme and contrasted facts termed 
mind and matter, we must grant that the total 
difference of nature has rendered the union very 
puzzling to express in language. The history of 
the question repeatedly exemplifies this difficulty. 
What I have in view is this : When I speak of 
mind as allied with body, with a brain and its 
nerve currents, I can scarcely avoid localizing 
the mind, giving it a local habitation. I am, 
therefore, asked to explain what always puzzled 
the school men, namely, whether the mind is all 
in every part or only all in the whole ; whether in 
tapping any point I may come at consciousness, 
or whether the whole mechanism is wanted for 
the smallest portion of consciousness. 

One might perhaps turn the question by the 
analogy of the telegraph wire, or the electric 
current, and say that a complete circle of action 


MIND, SOUL, SPIRIT, INTELLECT, EMOTIONS. 171 

is necessary to any mental manifestation, which 
is probably true, but this does not meet the case. 
The fact is, that all the time that we are speak¬ 
ing of nerves and wires we are not speaking of 
mind, properly so-called, at all. We are putting 
forward physical facts that go along with it, but 
these physical facts are not the mental fact. 
Men have studied for centuries to destroy or get 
rid of this contrast, but the more the question is 
discussed, the greater the contrast appears. 
There is no example of two agents so closely 
united as mind and body without some mental 
interference or adaptation. Still the union of 
our incorporeal and corporeal parts is a case quite 
peculiar, not to say unique ; and we are not en¬ 
titled to pronounce beforehand as to the behav¬ 
ior of two such agents in respect of each other. 

There might be certain mental functions of a 
lower kind partially dependent upon the material 
organization, while the highest functions might 
be of a purely spiritual nature, in no way gov¬ 
erned by physical conditions. For receiving im¬ 
pressions, in the first instance, we need the ex¬ 
ternal senses ; we are dependent on the constitu¬ 
tion and working of the eye, the ear, the organ 
of touch, and so on ; yet the deeper processes 
named, memory, reason and imagination, may be 
pure spirit, beyond and apart from all material 
processes. Here Mr. Bain yields the entire ques¬ 
tion of mind and the physical organism being 
inseparably connected or united. 



MONOTHEISM AND CIVILIZATION— 
NEITHER, ORIGINATED IN 
BARBARISM. 


The remotest men of whom any account is 
given, of whom anything is known, were neither 
fetich, nor polytheists, nor savages. They were 
believers in a Supreme Being. In fact, all poly¬ 
theists lived in a retrograde movement from the 
oldest and truest conception, that of one only 
Supreme Being, and, after a time had elapsed, 
they adopted a name for every one of his attrib¬ 
utes. During the prevalence of polytheism, the 
one only Supreme Being was regarded as the 
father of gods and men, and so their gods were 
representatives of the Supreme God, whom they 
worshiped by worshiping his several parts. Vol¬ 
taire says : “The polished nations of antiquity 
acknowledged a Supreme God,” adding: “There 
is not a book, not a medal, not a bas-relief, not an 
inscription, in which Juno, Minerva, Neptune, 
Mars or any of the other deities is spoken of as 
a forming being, the sovereign of all nature. On 
the contrary, the most ancient, profane books that 
we have, Hesiod and Homer, represent their Zeus 
as the only thunderer, the only master of gods 
( 172 ) 




MONOTHEISM AND CIVILIZATION. 


173 


and men; he even punishes the other gods ; he 
ties Juno with a chain, and drives Apollo out of 
heaven.” 

The Brahmins claim that the Shaster was their 
first sacred book. Here is a quotation from the 
first chapter of the Shaster : “God is one. He has 
created all. It is a perfect sphere without begin¬ 
ning or end. God conducts the whole creation 
by a general providence, resulting from a deter¬ 
mined principle.” The second chapter contains 
a like statement. Max Mueller says : “If there 
is one thing which a comparative study of relig¬ 
ions places in the clearest light, it is the inevita¬ 
ble decay to which every religion is exposed. 
Whenever we can trace a religion to its first 
beginnings, we find it free from many blemishes 
that affected it in its later stages.” In the his¬ 
tory of both civilization and religion we find 
breaks, downward tendencies, degenerations. 
The idea of developments without retrogressions 
is contrary to facts. Our noble conception of a 
monotheistic religion never originated with an 
apish idolatry. Paul was right when he said: 
“When they knew God they glorified him not as 
God, neither were thankful, but became vain in 
their imaginations, and their foolish heart was 
darkened ; professing themselves to be wise, they 
became fools, and changed the glory of the in¬ 
corruptible God into an image made like to cor¬ 
ruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, 


174 


MONOTHEISM AND CIVILIZATION. 


and creeping things, * * * they changed 

the truth of God into a lie, and worshiped and 
served the creature more than the Creator.’’— 
Romans 1. 

Here is the origin of idolatry : A moral retro¬ 
gression marked the history of these Gentile peo¬ 
ples ; they departed from the original monotheism. 
Paul makes the affirmation, that the invisible 
things of God, from the creation of the world, 
are clearly seen, being understood by the things 
which are made, even his eternal power and God¬ 
head.— Rom. 1:20. 

This takes us back behind polytheism, and it 
is corroborated by Hesiod and Homer, and by the 
first and second chapters of the Shaster, and by 
the ancient Greeks and Romans. 

Jovis—afterward Jupiter—was a translation 
of Zeus, and Zeus was a translation of the term 
Jehovah. The magi of Chaldea acknowledged 
but one Supreme Being, whom they adored in 
the stars. The Persians adored Him in the sun. 
The Egyptians^ called Him Knef. The sphere 
placed on the frontispiece of the temple of Mem¬ 
phis was the emblem of one only and perfect God 
—their Knef. Renouf, in the Hibbert lectures, 
as quoted by the Duke of Argyle, says : “The 
polytheism of Egypt is being traced through the 
many and easy paths which lead to the fashion¬ 
ing of many gods out of the attributes of one.” 
And adds: “It is incontestably true that the 


MONOTHEISM AND CIVILIZATION. 


175 


sublime portions of the Egyptian religion are not 
the comparatively later result of a process of de¬ 
velopment or elimination from the grosser. The 
sublimest portions are demonstrably ancient, and 
the last stage of the Egyptian religion, that known 
to the Greek and Roman writers, was by far the 
grossest and most corrupt. 

Rawlinson says : 4 ‘ Latent in the vedas there 

is found occasionally real monotheism, that here 
and there breaks forth a real consciousness that 
all the deities are but different names of one and 
the same Godhead.” 

Colebrook says : ‘ 4 The ancient Hindoos recog¬ 

nize but one God. The Rig-Veda speaks of that 
one which the wise call many names ; that he is 
God above all gods ; in the many names was the 
apparent polytheism, while, in fact, their religion 
was monotheistic. The Chinese degenerated from 
their ancient monotheism to the negative indiffer- 
entism of Confucius, and then to the materialism 
of the present times.” 

Rawlinson says: “It is thus evident that 
even in this outlying and remote section of the 
human race, so little brought into contact with 
others, there was an early monotheism, which was 
of a pure and decided character, but which grad¬ 
ually faded away, becoming first the negative and 
colorless theism of Confucius, and then sinking 
into oblivion before the attraction of 4 spirit wor¬ 
ship,’ the worship of the creature. Thus we 



176 


MONOTHEISM AND CIVILIZATION. 


have a retrogression from monotheism through 
Confucianism and spirit-worship to materialistic 
agnosticism and atheism. Monotheism was the 
primitive religion—the oldest of all.” 

That there are periods of progression in the 
history of peoples no intelligent person will deny, 
and also periods of retrogression and degrada¬ 
tion. The dark ages are a remarkable demon¬ 
stration of this fact. Mr. Buckle, a distinguished 
advocate of the evolution theory of religion and 
civilization, says: “The theologians turn cred¬ 
ulity to honor, and have little need to trouble 
themselves about facts, which indeed they set at 
open defiance. The inductive philosopher, on the 
other hand, is obliged to ground his inference on 
facts, which no one disputes, or which, at all 
events, any one can either verify for himself or 
see verified by others.” 

One who, like Sir Isaac Newton, despises mere 
hypothesis, mere inference or assumption, and 
that kind of reasoning called speculative, which 
always begins with an assumption, must neces¬ 
sarily smile when the advocates of Darwin’s 
hypothesis talk after Mr. Buckle’s style, because 
the entire philosophy of the evolution idea is 
built upon assumed facts, which, in case they 
ever occurred, are placed beyond the reach of veri¬ 
fication, and beyond the times of the existence of 
man, outside of human experience, and contrary 
to all known historic evidence. Millions of years 


MONOTHEISM AND CIVILIZATION. 


177 


are the blinds which these men close between us 
and their assumptions. 

Mr. Darwin admits a beginning of species in a 
creative miracle, giving a few units lying at the 
base of his series. His common sense reasoning 
from axioms, or first truths, demanded this, but 
his admirers, who are determined to leave God 
out of the question, find no beginning, but try 
to hide their ignorance with the blind-shutters of 
millions and millions of years. They have no 
genesis, or beginning. 

We can follow the Romans back to 750 B. C., 
and before them we have the Greeks. We can 
follow them back to Lycurgus, 900 B. G. Back 
of the Greeks we place the Trojan war, about 
1200 B. C., and the earlier Hebrew Chronicles 
were about 1500 B. C. And modern research 
has laid bare the Egyptian and Mesopotamian 
annals, so that we now know more, perhaps, of 
the daily life of the old Memphian and Theban 
monarchies than we do of the Romans before the 
Punic wars. Champollion and Young, fol¬ 
lowed by Layard, Rawlinson, Oppert, Lepsius, 
Marietta and others, have found the key to the 
mysterious characters that were stamped upon 
the Babylonian bricks, or traced on the walls of 
the Egyptian tombs. The long-sealed records of 
ancient India, of Phoenecia, of Palestine, of 
Persia and Moab, have been more or less illus- 
12 


178 


MONOTHEISM AND CIVILIZATION. 


trated by archeological inquiry. So we find our¬ 
selves face to face with the builders of the pyra¬ 
mids and the Tower of Babel, with the* hoary 
antiquity of the vedas and the first rovers of the 
sea, whose traces have been found in America. 

We find all these primeval peoples, the Chinese, 
the Hindoos, the Egyptians, the Babylonians, 
the Arabians, the Assyrians, the Phoenicians, the 
Grecians and the Romans, suddenly appearing 
on the scene of human existence with a full- 
fledged civilization, followed by the dark ages 
in the Roman degeneracy. The builders of the 
oldest pyramids were acquainted with all the arts 
of civilized life, and their civilization was in every 
respect as high as that of any later period of 
the Egyptian monarchy, and the art was even 
higher. 

Renan says : “When we think of this civiliza¬ 
tion, it had no infancy, and of this art, of which 
there remains innumerable monuments, it had 
no archaic epoch.” The Egypt erf the oldest 
times was superior in a sense to all that followed. 
The same is true of Babylon and Nineveh. 

All this guess-work, touching our civilization 
being an evolution from utter barbarism, is with¬ 
out any evidence whatever. It is naked assump¬ 
tion, unworthy of any intelligent scientist or 
historian. What do evolutionists, or anybody 
else, know of the daily life of beings half brute 
and half human? Evolutionists themselves place 


MONOTHEISM AND CIVILIZATION. 


179 


them behind all historic evidence, and outside of 
the limits of human observation and experience. 
How can man find the beginning of an assumed 
evolution, of which neither they nor others ever 
received any information? 

These men, like Ingersoll, are continually call¬ 
ing for facts. One fact, they say, is a legal tender. 
Very well, we are satisfied with the demand, and 
shall demand that they cease guessing at things, 
and get at least inside of human experience, and 
give us some evidence besides their base asser¬ 
tion^^ Historical criticism and archeological re¬ 
search take us back to the fourth dynasty of, 
Manetho, and to the third of Berosus, and the 
east is in a blaze of light—the light of civilized 
life. These are the facts, and neither science 
nor history has any account of what preceded this 
state of things, the Hebrew scriptures excepted 
—by the way, they give us this same account of 
the beginning of human history. Two thousand 
years before Christ, Abraham found in Egypt gov¬ 
ernment, art and architecture, cities and agricul¬ 
ture. Five hundred years before Christ Hero¬ 
dotus found temples, tombs and monuments. So 
far as any man can discover Egyptian civiliza¬ 
tion had no infancy. Rawlinson asked this im¬ 
portant question : “What does the earliest history 
say as to the earliest condition of mankind? Does 
it accord with the bulk of those who write the 
accounts, now so common, of prehistoric man? 



180 


MONOTHEISM AND CIVILIZATION. 


Does it make the primeval man a savage, or 
something very remote from a savage?” To us 
it seems that, so far as the voice of history speaks 
at all, it is in favor of a primitive race of men, 
not indeed equipped with all the arts and appli¬ 
ances of our modern civilization, but substan- 
ially civilized, possessing language, thought, 
intelligence ; conscious of a Divine Being ; quick 
to form the conception of tools and to frame 
them as it needed them ; early developing many 
of the useful arts, and only sinking by degrees, 
and under peculiar circumstances, into the sav¬ 
age condition. Here is retrogression again. 

Hseckle’s notion is that the lost link, the ape 
man that begat man, was the inhabitant of a now 
sunken continent south of Asia. And Darwin 
places him in Africa. And Wagner places him 
in Europe. And Spiller places him in the polar 
regions. Hseckle’s notion has the advantage of 
all the others, because it closes forever the search 
after his bones, and stops all inquiry as to the 
precise spot where they repose, so we may 
never weep over his grave. Hseckle’s notion 
ends all questions about the missing link, as 
well as all questions about the entire chain lying 
behind the ape man. Darwin says it is proba¬ 
ble that Africa was formerly inhabited by extinct 
apes. This is all, of course, very scientific, com¬ 
ing from men who think so much of facts? 

Mr. Tyndall, who believes in justification, not 


MONOTHEISM AND CIVILIZATION. 


181 


by faith only, but by verification, says : “Science 
without verification, instead of being a fortress of 
adamant, is a house of clay.” He also says : “A 
theoretic conception without verification is a 
mere figment of the mind.” The theory, or hy¬ 
pothesis, that religion, and civilization, and all 
else, is an evolution from apish superstition and 
brutal barbarism, is a bundle of ifs. If some¬ 
thing is true, something else is true, and if, and 
if. It is based upon an infinite number of 
guesses reaching back across millions and mill¬ 
ions of ages. The bulk of its assumed facts are 
behind historic times, unverified and unverifia- 
ble, and opposed to all available evidence. 

To accept the hypothesis of evolution you must 
shut your eyes to all laws of evidence and to all 
axioms, and if you can’t do this you must be 
content to be relegated, by the wise ones, who 
claim kinship with brutes, to the uneducated 
blockheads and fools of our country, by the 
picture-heads, the wise ones “whose brains are 
full of pictures” illustrating the evolutionary 
series of species from first to last—the unknown 
ape. 

There was a time when our ancestors all lived 
under the same roof, and learned the same les¬ 
sons, and used the same symbols. The first les¬ 
son that I will mention is wrapped up in the 
symbol known as the Key of the Nile, called the 
“crux Ansanta” or the hidden wisdom. We 



182 


MONOTHEISM AND CIVILIZATION. 


find it with the Egyptians upon the breast of 
their mummies ; with the Chaldeans ; with the 
Phoenicians ; with the Peruvians ; with the Mex¬ 
icans ; with the Babylonians. It is on their 
cylinders ; it is found in the ruined cities of Cen¬ 
tral America; it is in the hands of Brahma, 
Vishna and Siva ; it is on the battle-ax of Thor ; 
it is on the pagodas of China; it is with a sect 
in Japan ; it is with the Knights of, St. John in 
Malta, and on the sceptre of the Bompa deities 
of Thibet; it is on the sculptured stones of Scot¬ 
land ; it is on the ancient coins of Gaul; on the 
urns of northern Italy. It is found in Persia, in 
Kamchatka and in Britain. It was emblematic 
of creative energy, of immortality, of the resur¬ 
rection, and of the divine unity—the original 
monotheism —one God , and one only. 

How was it that all these peoples got hold of 
the “Crux Ansanta?” And how is it that all 
nations have a legend of the flood? The Greek 
and Fiji Islander, Ovid and Berosus, carry us to 
the flood as the beginning of human history. To 
this agree the Phrygians, the Cherokees, the 
Peruvians, the Hindoos and the Chinese. Did 
these people all dream the same thing at the same 
time? Or was it more than a dream? We have 
the Chaldean account of the flood, which Mr. 
George Smith recently deciphered from the Assy¬ 
rian monuments. He says : “The cuniform in¬ 
scription which I have recently found and trans- 


MONOTHEISM AND CIVILIZATION. 


183 


lated gives a long and full account of the deluge. 
It contains the version or tradition of this event, 
which existed in the Chaldean period of the city 
of Erech, one of the cities of Nimrod, now repre¬ 
sented by the ruins of Warka. In this newly- 
discovered inscription the account of the deluge 
is put as a narrative into the mouth of Noah. 
He relates the wickedness of the antediluvians, 
the command to build the ark, its building, the 
filling of it, the deluge, the resting of the ark, 
the sending out of the birds, and other matters. 
The narrative has a close resemblance to the ac¬ 
count transmitted by the Greeks from Berosus, 
the Chaldean historian.” 

Appolodorus and Lucian ascribe the deluge to 
the wickedness of the world. The Phrygian 
tradition was commemorated by a medal struck 
at Apamsea in the reign of Septimus Severus. 
This city was formerly called “ Ribotos,” or the 
Ark. On the medal is depicted the ark floating 
upon the waters. Two persons are seen as if com¬ 
ing out of it. There is a bird upon the top of the 
ark, and another flying towards it with an olive 
branch in its feet. On some specimens of this 
medal we have the letters No, or Noe. 

Humboldt says : “ The Aztecs, the Zapotecs, 

the Flascoltecs and the Mexicans have paintings 
of the deluge. Secularists say these memories are 
confined to the Semitic and Aryan races. This is 


184 


MONOTHEISM AND CIVILIZATION. 


contradicted by the legends of the Chinese, by the 
natives of Polynesia, by the American Indians, 
and by the Tartars. How will secularists dispose 
of these facts? 

Where were all these different peoples, now 
scattered far and wide, when they all received 
the lesson of the flood? These wo rid-wide les¬ 
sons are monuments of the ancient unity of the 
race, and the civilization of the different peoples, 
and the monotheism of the Bible. 

There is a tradition among nearly all nations 
of a terrestrial paradise. The Arabians tell of a 
garden in the east, on the summit of a mountain 
of Jacinth, covered with trees and flowers of rare 
colors and fragrance. The Zendavesta consists 
of five books of the Parsees, the descendants of 
the ancient Persians. The authorship is ascribed 
to Zoroaster, who, according to Pliny, lived 2,500 
years before Christ. These books mention a 
region which they call Heden , a pleasure garden 
in Persia. The Vishna Purana tells us that in 
the center of Jambudwipa is the golden mountain 
Meru, which stands like the seed-cup of the lotos 
of the earth. On its summit is the vast city of 
Brahma, encircled by the Ganges, which, issuing 
from the foot of Vishna, is divided into four 
streams that flow to the four quarters of the earth. 

The Chinese have their enchanted gardens and 
their fountain of immortality dividing off into 
four Streams. 


MONOTHEISM AND CIVILIZATION. 


186 


We read of the sacred Asgard of the Scandi¬ 
navians springing from the center of a fruitful 
land, which was watered by four primeval rivers ; 
also of the Sineru of the Buddhist, with its four- 
limbed Deamba tree, with its never-fading blos¬ 
soms, from between whose roots issue the four 
sacred streams that water the garden of the Su¬ 
preme God—Sekra. 

These legends are all taken from Genesis, 2 : 
10-15. The earmarks are perfectly visible. 
Where were all these different people when they 
learned for the first time these lessons common 
to them all? They were all at one time under 
the roof of the ark. 

Finally, can any man believe that the son 
of a carpenter with twelve illiterate men, me¬ 
chanics, tax-gatherers, fishermen, unassisted by 
any superhuman wisdom and power, were able 
to invent and promulgate a system of religion 
and morals, the most sublime and perfect, which 
all such men as Plato, Aristotle and Cicero had 
overlooked, and that they, by their own wisdom, 
repudiated every false virtue, and admitted every 
true virtue? Can any man believe that they 
were impostors for no other purpose than the 
promulgation of true morality? Villains for no 
purpose, but to teach honesty? And martyrs 
with no prospect of honor or advantage? Or 
that as false witnesses they were able to spread 
this religion over the known world, in opposition 





186 


MONOTHEISM AND CIVILIZATION. 


to all the wickedness which it condemns, in 
opposition to the ambition and character of man¬ 
kind in general? Can you believe that those 
men triumphed, as they did, over the prejudices 
of the rulers, the intrigues of states, the forces of 
custom, the blindness of zeal, the influence of 
priests, the arguments of orators and the philoso¬ 
phies of the world, without any superhuman 
assistance ? 

Many impostors and enthusiasts have tried to 
impose upon the world, but none of them ever 
volunteered death as a necessary and essential 
part of their work, and not one in earth’s history 
was ever so sublimely mad as to give such a 
lesson to poor humanity as the sermon upon the 
mount; such madness deserves the admiration of 
the world. Christianity gives to life piety, 
honesty, and virtue, and in death it gives vic¬ 
tory. Absent from the body and present with 
the Lord. For me to live is Christ, and to die is 
gain. 

“Rich hope of boundless bliss! 

Bliss past man’s power to paint it. Time’s to close! 

This hope is earth’s most estimable prize; 

This is man’s portion while no more than man; 

Hope, of all passions, most befriends us here; 

Passions of prouder name befriend us less. 

Joy has her tears, and transport has her death; 

Hope, like a cordial, innocent though strong, 

Man’s heart at once inspirits and serenes, 

Nor makes him pay his wisdom for his joys; 

’Tis all our present state can safely bear, 


MONOTHEISM AND CIVILIZATION. 187 

f 

Health to the frame, and vigor to the mind! 

A joy attempered! a chastised delight! 

Like the fair summer evening, mild and sweet! 

’Tis man’s full cup, his paradise below! 

A bless’d hereafter, then, or hoped or gained, 

Is all,—our hope of happiness!” 

The fame of all ages, and the wealth of all the 
world, is not equivalent to the mere hope of liv¬ 
ing forever in mutual association with the pure, 
the heavenly. 




INSPIRATION 


There is an inspiration that was given to man¬ 
kind in the creative act. The Lord Himself, 
interrogating Job (See Ch. 38 and verse 36 ), asks : 
“Who hath put wisdom in the inward parts, or 
who hath given understanding to the heart?” 
When Job’s comforters had all said their pieces, 
Elihu came forward, taking the Lord’s part, and 
said: “But there is a spirit in man, and the 
inspiration of the Almighty giveth them under¬ 
standing.”— Job , 32:8. This inspiration elevates 
men above the nature of beasts and all other 
creatures of the lower kingdom. There are two 
cases in which this fact is established : 1. The 
decree uttered with reference to Nebuchadnezzar. 
“Let his heart be changed from man’s, and let a 
beast’s heart be given unto him, and let seven 
times pass over him.”— Dan ., 1^:16. 

2. Job , 39th Ch. The Lord talking to Job, and 
interrogating him, said: “Gavest thou wings 
and feathers unto the ostrich? Which leaveth her 
eggs in the earth, and warmeth them in dust, 
and forgetteth that the foot may crush them, or 
that the wild beast may break them. She is 
hardened against her young ones, as though they 
(188) 




INSPIRATION. 


189 


were not hers : her labor is in vain without fear; 
because God hath deprived her of wisdom [she 
foresees no evil to her eggs in the dust], neither 
hath he imparted to her understanding.” 

This is the representative of the lower king¬ 
dom ; Nebuchadnezzar was let down to this king¬ 
dom until seven times passed over him, by having 
his heart changed from man’s to a beast’s heart. 
How was this accomplished? Not by taking his 
spirit from him, for in that case he would have 
been dead. It was accomplished by taking two 
things from him which returned to him after¬ 
wards. What were they? Answer, his reason 
and his understanding, the very things which 
the ostrich did not possess, and which were given 
to the spirit of man by the inspiration of the Al¬ 
mighty. See Dan. 4 ,: 16, 34 and 36. 

Wherever there is understanding', wisdom to 
foresee evils that may arise, and reason, there 
has been inspiration. The inspiration of the Al¬ 
mighty gave men all these, and by so doing 
capacitated them for education by means of ex¬ 
ternal revelation. But, man being connected with 
this world alone, by his five senses alone, could 
never rise above himself and his world to anoth¬ 
er world, without a revelation from the other 
world. When we came into the world we had a 
very limited instructive knowledge—enough how¬ 
ever to enable us to make an effort for food to 
supply our hunger. Soon our dependence upon 




190 


INSPIRATION. 


external revelation began to show itself. Hav¬ 
ing the capacity to receive sounds and imitate 
them, we began to talk. And then we were in¬ 
troduced to A, B, C, D. The relation of these 
letters to each other is not natural but arbitrary, 
so we had need of faith in our teachers, and here 
is the beginning of faith. 

And here is the source or foundation of my 
ability and your ability to read and write and 
speak. There is no other source or foundation. 
Human capacities, growing out of the original 
inspiration of the creative act, were and are in¬ 
herent in human nature, are a part and a very 
great part of ourselves. These innate capacities 
were not and are not a sunlight of knowledge, 
but constitute our natural abilities, which we 
may neglect or misuse and live and die in igno¬ 
rance and wretchedness, or, on the other hand, 
we may use them so as to increase knowledge. 
The man of two talents may gain two more ; the 
man with five may gain five more ; the man with 
one may be condemned as a wicked man because 
he buried his talent, making no return to God for 
elevating him one degree above brute nature ; he 
might have ascended one more degree at least, 
increasing his talent from one to two. 

The original inspiration gave men understand¬ 
ing with ability to foresee evils common in human 
life, and capacities, abilities to profit by educa¬ 
tion. And this condition is as universal as the 


INSPIRATION. 


191 


race. But all this belongs to the lower story, to 
this world, and never was sufficient for man’s 
greatest happiness, with his longings for another 
and a better country. The Fijis were, for a long 
time, at least, with others of our race, can¬ 
nibals, living on the flesh of women and children. 
Yet they were qualified by the original, universal 
inspiration for a better lower-story life. Man, 
left to the universal original inspiration alone, is 
left to himself, and the world left to this is left 
to itself. Men left to this may educate them¬ 
selves in a very great measure, and have much 
understanding, and much worldly wisdom, and 
w^rite many books, but all belong to the lower 
story. Because they never did, nor ever will get 
into the upper story without learning from the 
upper room. 

The most noted teacher, Christ, said: “No 
man can come to Me except the Father which 
sent Me draw him, and I will raise him up at the 
last day. It is written in the prophets they shall 
all be taught of God. Every one, therefore, that 
hath heard and hath learned of the Father 
cometh unto Me.”—■ John , 6 :^. The original 
universal inspiration that some men call the 
inner light never took a man to Christ and never 
will, for it is the light of the lower story. Men 
must hear and learn of the Father, by what 
means? Through whom? Answer, it must come 
from the upper story. So the heavenly Father 



192 


INSPIRATION. 


sent one from the upper story, from heaven to 
earth, His only begotten Son, and said to the 
children of men : Hear ye Him. Before he thus 
spake he chose his own men and gave them His 
holy spirit, inspiring them, raising them above 
the plane of the natural to the spiritual, and 
they all, in advance of the advent of Christ into 
this world, gave witness to Him, “that through 
His name wdiosoever believeth in Him should re¬ 
ceive remission of sins.”— Acts, 10:1^3. 

Jesus said to Thomas, “I am the way, the truth 
and the life ; no man cometh unto the Father, 
but by Me. God, who at sundry times, and in 
divers manners spake in time past unto the 
fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days 
spoken unto us by His Son.”— Heb., 1:1-2. As 
in the first or lower house, we were blessed with 
capacities for education, and dependent upon 
teaching for our knowledge of earthly things, 
so with our capacities, we are qualified for edu¬ 
cation from our teacher who came to make us 
acquainted with heavenly things. How does it 
come to pass that men who were dependent upon 
their faith in their first teachers, who lifted them 
up in the knowledge of earthly things, now re¬ 
pudiate the external revelation of heavenly things, 
and throw themselves back upon themselves, 
and in their unbelief or want of faith in the 
greatest of all teachers make war upon the reve¬ 
lation of heavenly things?' 


INSPIRATION. 


193 


The facts known in the history of pagans ought 
to cause them to blush with shame. Even old 
Rousseau, in his unbelief and wickedness, was the 
author of that saying, Socrates died like a philos¬ 
opher, but the Nazarene died like a God. With 
his inner light, which he had by the original in¬ 
spiration, he said, I have only to consult myself 
concerning what I do. All that I feel to be right 
is right. The man that had one talent and buried 
it was just this kind of a man. Man, left to the 
inspiration of the creative act, with his talent or 
talents—one, two or five—is man left to himself ; 
and this is selfishness—the parent of ninety-nine 
sins of an hundred. 

The world, without God’s revelation, given by 
the men of his own choosing, and confirmed by 
superhuman evidences, is the world left to itself 
—the world without God, and without hope of 
another and better world. 

If we had not been created with understanding 
and a good degree of wisdom, as well as with 
reason, we could not have been educated, except 
as beasts are educated. And is it not after all 
external revelation, in the shape of education, 
that causes the difference between the cannibal, 
with his face smeared with blood, feeding upon 
the flesh of women and children, and the civil¬ 
ized American? The cannibals, all, had the in¬ 
spiration of the creative act—the inspiration that 
18 


194 


INSPIRATION. 


enables all authors of worldly books to make 
books—the “world wide inspiration*’—the “in¬ 
ner-light.” But which one of all of them ever 
made a book like the Bible? And which one of 
all ever gave the light of a future life? If the 
original inspiration, that unbelievers claim be¬ 
longs to other books, is all that we need, then it 
is all that the race needs. So Parker must 
have been right when he said, in his discourses 
against the Bible, p. 33 : “Everything that is of 
use to man lies in the plain of his own conscious¬ 
ness.” 

The Bible revelation, given by the inspiration 
that is connected with the second creation—the 
creation of a spiritual family in Christ Jesus, has 
Christianized and civilized thousands of people 
who were once cannibals. “Where there is no 
vision (revelation) the people perish.”— Prob., 
29:18. “There is a spirit in every man, which 
knows the things of the man.”—2 Cor., 2:11. 
But there is another world besides this, and 
another spirit besides the spirit of man, arid 
another inspiration besides that inspiration which 
has filled the world with worldly wisdom and 
literature. And that is the inspiration of prophets 
and apostles—men of God’s own choosing, and 
from this inspiration comes the wisdom which is 
from above, which is first pure, then peaceable, 
gentle, easy to be entreated, full of mercy 


INSPIRATION. 


195 


and good fruits, without partiality and without 
hypocrisy. 

The advocates of world-wide inspiration, which 
was given to Adam, the first; secularists deny¬ 
ing the Bible and warring against the inspira¬ 
tion connected with Adam, the second, affirm the 
all sufficiency of one-worldism for the needs of 
all mankind without association with any form 
of theology. 

The logical outcome of all this is first Atheism, 
or that there is no God, or, second, that God has 
left his creatures without any instructions in ref¬ 
erence to another world, and another life, yes, 
without any instructions, even with reference to 
this life. Some of them say, there is no God, 
and that death ends all. Some of them are, ac¬ 
cording to their own statements, poor, miserable, 
dissatisfied creatures, with no prospect of deliv¬ 
erance. Men who claim no other inspiration 
besides the universal inspiration have just three 
ideas touching the future of man. And those 
are found in pagan history. 1. That death ends 
all. 2. That the spirit of man will wander about 
forever in the land of shadows, and fly about and 
rap tables, and perform some other tricks in 
answer to the sign or request of some brazen¬ 
faced medium. 3. The spirit will pass through 
a succession of bodies, and keep on passing. 
This superstition was once very common among 


196 


INSPIRATION. 


the Hindoos. It is popularly called, the doc¬ 
trine of the transmigration of souls. 

“Tell me,” said a dying Hindoo, “Tell me 
what will become of my soul when I die?” A 
Brahman, standing by, said : “Your soul will go 
into the body of a holy cow.” “And what after 
that?” “It will pass into the body of a divine 
bird (peacock).” “And what after that?” “It 
will pass into a flower.” “Oh! tell me,” said 
the dying man, “Where will it go last of all —last 
of all?'’ Unbelievers in the Christian’s religion 
will never answer this question. They never 
have. Let us listen to Robert Ingersoll, standing 
over his brother’s dead body. He said : “Life is 
a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks 
of two eternities. We strive in vain to look be¬ 
yond the heights. We cry aloud , and the only 
answer is the echo of our wailing cry. Whether 
in mid sea or ’mong the breakers of the farther 
shore, a wreck must mark at last the end of each ; 
and all and every life, no matter if its every 
hour is rich with love, and every moment jeweled 
with a joy, will, at its close, become a tragedy 
as sad, and deep, and dark, as can be woven of 
the warp and woof of mystery and death.” 

Then Tyndall said : “Whence come we and 
whither go we?” Then says : “The question dies 
without an answer, without even an echo upon 
the infinite shores of the unknown.” “Where 
there is no vision [revelation] the people perish.” 


INSPIRATION. 


197 


The universal inspiration by the creative act 
never threw any light upon those questions ; its 
light belongs to the lower house, belongs to this 
world. Those men fall back upon the inspira¬ 
tion that is natural, and common, and universal, 
and try to pull the Bible down upon the same 
plane by denying its avowed and special inspira¬ 
tion. Some of them have outrun the Hindoos in 
the multiplication of their divinities, claiming 
that every stick, and stone, and reptile, is God. 
One of those exceedingly wise fellows said to me : 
“I am God.” And when asked, what is matter, 
his answer was : “There is no matter.” A doc¬ 
tor standing by said, “there is no matter in you,” 
and turning upon his heels, left the room. 

When men reject the Bible and the religion of 
Jesus Christ, they are doomed to darkness and 
the shadow of death. World-wide inspiration is 
claimed by all unbelievers in the religion of Jesus 
Christ. And it is claimed to be all that we have 
need of. It amounts to just this, do as you please. 
Oh ! selfishness ! thou art the parent of more sins 
than a few. No self-denial can come in here. 
Those men go further still; they tell us the will 
of the majority is only the law of might, and if 
they can overcome it their will is just as good. 
With them oaths in civil suits are an idle super¬ 
stition. There is no further judgment, no end¬ 
less punishment. Sins are like the morning dew. 
Some of them say, there is no sin ; others say, 


198 


INSPIRATION. 


sin is good in disguise. It lias been well said 
that God’s rights are the only basis of human 
rights. Take away God’s laws and you have 
not a vestige of authority left in their world-wide 
inspiration to any government. 

All we have left is the point of the bayonet and 
the weapons of war. I believe it was Sherman 
who said war is hell. The rights of God are the 
only basis of the rights of man. It is the right 
of the creator to govern his creatures. “We hold 
these truths to be self-evident,” said the framers 
of the basis of the American government, “That 
all men are created equal, that they are endowed 
with certain inalienable rights.” So we believe. 
The facts in the history of our race demonstrate 
the utter absurdity of the idea that man with his 
natural inspiration has no need of a revelation 
from the upper world. The very idea is the folly 
of universal selfishness, pagan idolatry, and 
crimes. Plato, a pagan philosopher, had all that 
is in universal and common inspiration. So had 
Demosthenes, Cicero, Seneca, and Socrates. 
Plato said : “He may lie who knows how to do 
it.” He taught, a community of property, and of 
wives, and said suicide was a mark of heroism. 
Oaths—profane oaths, are frequent in the writ¬ 
ings of both Plato and Seneca. Demosthenes 
committed suicide, poisoning himself. And these 
all had superior natural talents, the very highest 
degree of natural inspiration. And who has 


INSPIRATION. 


199 


never shed a tear over the fate of Socrates and 
his last words? He said : “I am going out of this 
world, and you are to remain in it, but which of 
us has the better part the Lord only knows.” 

Hesiod tells us the Romans had thirty thousand 
gods, and they regarded Jupiter, their master god, 
as the meanest one of all. In their estimation 
he must be this in order to excel. They attrib¬ 
uted all their attributes of character to their gods. 
Jupiter was considered an adulterer, Mars a mur¬ 
derer, Mercury a thief, Bacchus a drunkard and 
Venus a harlot. Their most sacred mysteries were 
so detestable and infamous that, finally, it was 
considered necessary for the sake of any remnant 
of good order to prohibit them. The Roman laws 
allowed parents to murder infants. The laws of 
Sparta required the death of unhealthy children. 
When Agathoclas besieged Carthage two hundred 
infants were murdered by order of the senate, and 
three hundred citizens sacrificed themselves, vol¬ 
untarily, to Saturn. Here the Bible was not in 
the way, and if a common and natural and 
world-wide inspiration—world-wide inner-light, 
ever was sufficient for man’s needs, it ought to 
have saved those lives at Carthage. “Where 
there is no vision the people perish.” Think of 
the thousands who threw themselves beneath the 
wheels of the car of old Juggernaut in India and 
were instantly crushed ; think of all the idolatry 
and paganism of the uncivilized world, through 


200 


INSPIRATION. 


all the ages of the past, of all the blood that has 
been shed, and ask yourselves whether the uni¬ 
versal, common inspiration gives mankind all we 
need. . No, it did not save France from the French 
revolution, nor America from the blood of her 
civil war. 

The Bible is God’s book ; it was given by the 
men whom the Heavenly Father chose and quali¬ 
fied for the work. No prophecy of the Scriptures 
is of any private interpretation. Why? Answer. 
For the prophecy came not in old time by the 
will of man, but holy men of old spake as they 
were moved by the holy spirit.—2 Peter 1:21. 
The Bible is God’s book ; God, who at sundry 
times and in divers manners spake in time past 
unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these 
last days spoken unto us by his Son.— Heb . 
1 :1. And this is the inspiration connected with 
Adam the second, and with the new creation. In 
this revelation of God we are invited to the very 
highest type of true manhood—invited to Christ, 
invited to life, invited to the city of the great 
King for our eternal home. Assured that if we 
heed the invitation we will be gainers even in 
death, that to be absent from the body is to be 
present with the .Lord. The wicked is driven 
away in his wickedness, but the righteous hath 
hope in his death. “The spirit and the bride say 
come. And let him that heareth say come. And 
whosoever will-” 















































































































. 

KasM 





































































































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